For quiet, cautious and restless college freshman Vivian Feld, real life begins the day she moves in with Leethe, daughter of the died-too-young singer Jesse Parrish and model-turned-fashion-designer Linda West—and the music-obsessed Andy Elliott.
After a one-night stand fractures Lee and Andy’s easy camaraderie, Lee invites Viv into her glamorous, harum-scarum world: an intoxicating mix of Hollywood directors, up-and-coming artists, and first-class everything. It is the beginning of a friendship that will inexorably shape both women as they embark on the rocky road to adulthood.
More than a decade later, Viv is married to Andy and hasn’t heard from Lee in three years. Suddenly, Lee pops up again, begging for a favor: she needs Viv’s help finding the album her father was recording before his death. Harboring a life-changing secret and ambivalent about the future and the choices she’s made, Viv allows herself to be pulled into Lee’s glamorous orbit once again. It is a decision that will hold unexpected repercussions and teach her a painful lesson: While the sun dazzles us with its warmth and brilliance, it can also blind us from seeing what we really need.
In Deborah Shapiro’s skilled hands, what begins as a familiar story—the good girl falling under the bad girl’s spell—evolves into an evocative one, told with wit and verve, that captures the magic and mystery of female friendship in all its glorious intensity and heartbreaking complexity.