Clayton, California. Janie Harris likes her comics creepy, her music mopey, and goes along to get along with her lovingly authoritarian mother. Before the summer of 1990, she would tell you that her little Central Valley town had everything she needed. That is, until a job at the lake, promising pocket money and autonomy from her devout family, delivers Lydia instead. When summer brings their time together to an end, Janie entangles her best friend in a plan to deceive her family so she can maintain her relationship with Lydia until getting caught lands her in a perilous situation that upends her world. She must choose between denying herself to reclaim the comfortable life she knew or leaving everything behind. In the decade that follows, Janie will brave a world unknown and the past she cannot outrun. First love, second chances, and the myth of closure. Set across the American West, this debut novel is an unflinching tale of one girl's brackish path to finding her grit and ultimately acquiescing to the bliss of letting go.