Golden State

"In the vein of Defending Jacob or We Need to Talk About Kevin, a compelling literary drama about finding evil close to home and how far a woman will go to protect her family. All her life, Natalie Askedahl has been the good girl, an obedient team player. Growing up as the youngest child in one of California's most prominent political families, she worshipped her big brother, Bobby, a sensitive math prodigy who served as her protector and confidante. But after Bobby left home at sixteen on a Harvard scholarship, something changed between them as Bobby retreated deeper into his own head. Now that Natalie is a happily married, with a lawyer husband, two young daughters, and a house in the Berkeley Hills, her only real regret is losing Bobby. Then, a bomb explodes in the middle of her ideal-seeming life. Her oldest daughter is on the Stanford campus when one person is killed and another maimed. Worse, other attacks follow across California. Frightened for her family, Natalie grows obsessed with the case of the so-called Cal Bomber, until she makes an unthinkable discovery: the bomber's infamous manifesto reads alarmingly like the last letter she has from Bobby, whom she has seen only once in fifteen years. Unable to face the possibility that her sweet brother could be a monster and a murderer, is confronted with a terrible choice, about who to sacrifice and who to protect. The decision she makes will send her down a rabbit hole of confusion, lies, and betrayals that threaten to destroy her relationships with everyone she holds dear. As her life splits irrevocably into before and after, what she begins to learn is that some of the most dangerous things in the world are the stories we tell ourselves"--

"A haunting and heartstopping novel about a suburban mother of two who is faced with an unthinkable choice: betray her husband and children, the brother who helped raise her, or her country"--