Invisible Years

"It's impossible to get a singleanswer from the past. It's not a key to anything. It's just a place we go totrick ourselves."

Andrea and Julin haven't seen oneanother in twenty-one years-not since that tragic, fateful night their senioryear of high school that marked their group of friends forever. A shockingphone call brings the two together again in Houston, where they begin to unravelthe truth of that year, picking open long scabbed-over wounds from theirupper-class adolescence in 1990s Boliviaand the scandal that ripped them apart.

A writer unhappy in his career andhis marriage, Julin has been novelizing the past for his next book, trying tomake meaning out of the events that changed the course of their lives forever. "I'dthought that writing about that time would free me, relieve the burden of theinvisible years," he writes, "but often it seems that it's done the reverse."Juxtaposing the nave invincibility of adolescence with the grasping uncertaintiesof adulthood, The Invisible Years deftly weaves a coming-of-age tale thatleaves the reader hanging on every word, even as they know how the cards fallin the end.