Between Here and April

Aliterary novel about grief, memory, family, and the ways a sudden loss can reshape a person’s understanding of the past.

 

“A haunting work of ambition and dimension.”—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion

When a deep-seated memory suddenly surfaces, Elizabeth Burns becomes obsessed with the long-ago disappearance of her childhood friend April Cassidy. Driven to investigate, Elizabeth discovers a thirty-five-year-old newspaper article revealing the details that had been hidden from her as a child—shocking revelations about April’s fate and her mother, Adele, who struggled with postpartum depression.

Elizabeth, now herself a mother, seeks out anyone who might help piece together the final months, days, and hours of this troubled woman’s life, but the answers yield only more questions. And those questions lead back to Elizabeth’s own life: her own compromised marriage, her increasing self-doubt and dissatisfaction, and finally, a fearsome reckoning with what it means to be a wife and mother.