From the author of The Bright Years, the story of April and Leo, a couple on the brink of collapse. When their house goes up in flames, family secrets and thorny histories emerge as they are forced to decide what is worth salvaging.

When April and Leo’s house burns in the middle of the night, they escape with their two young children and the quiet knowledge that the fire is not the only thing threatening their family. They retreat to April’s childhood home in Dallas, where her spirited parents and siblings provide both comfort and complication.

As the family reckons with the aftermath—grief, guilt, logistics, and memories scorched and intact—the fire exposes the cracks already forming in April and Leo’s marriage. The novel unfolds in alternating perspectives: from April, who feels the crushing weight of motherhood, marriage, and self-blame; from Leo, a high school history teacher shaped by a lonely, fractured childhood; from Deb, April’s generous and no-nonsense mother who has to contend with her husband’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis; and from flashbacks that trace April and Leo’s relationship from its earliest days of connection to the devastating decisions that led them here.

A family saga suffused with humor, longing, and heartbreak, The Burning Side is about what we inherit and what we choose, about forgiveness and the ache of being known. It is, above all, about the meaning of home and the costs of long love.

This was one of those books that I really enjoyed while I was reading it, and then sat with it for a few days and ended up loving it even more the more I thought about it. For me, it was the kind of book that doesn’t fully hit you until you’ve had some time and space away from it. That just goes to show how powerful books can be.

April and Leo are married with two kids. One night (which just so happens to be the same night Leo told April he wants a divorce), their house catches fire. They narrowly escape with their two young kids and basically nothing else. They move into April’s parents’ place in Dallas while the insurance company decides whether what’s left of the house can be salvaged. The waiting and the wondering whether something can still be saved or rebuilt, is a pretty perfect mirror for their marriage. April thinks she and Leo can still be saved. Leo isn’t sure he wants to be.

The book is told through three separate perspectives: April, Leo, and April’s mother. I’ll be honest, at first I wasn’t sure why the mother’s chapters were in there. Two POVs for a marriage on the rocks tracks with what I was expecting. The third one threw me for a bit, but the longer I read, the more I understood, and by the end the book probably wouldn’t have had the same impact had her chapters not been included.

The other thing the book does really well is move through time. We don’t just follow April and Leo in the present day. We jump back through years of their relationship, watching them first meet, watching the early days when everything was new and possible, watching the smaller cracks open over time. By the time you understand the choices that brought them to the present, you also understand them as people. You see how two people who really did love each other could end up in this much pain. That kind of long-view storytelling is hard to pull off without dragging, and Damoff manages it really well.

The whole book is deeply heartfelt and the characters are all amazingly flawed and complex and way too real. The way they all keep trying to do right by each other, even when they’re making things worse, is the thing that got me. I also loved that despite their flaws and imperfections, nobody was the villain. Everybody is doing the best they can (or at least the best they think they can) and everyone has pride they’re dealing with and skeletons that keep coming back to haunt them. I also loved the way the author used the fire and the damaged home as a metaphor without ever being heavy-handed about it. There’s a literal fire and there’s an emotional fire–both of which have resulted in a damaged home.

If you love literary fiction about complicated marriages, and family bond, and finding yourself again, this is one to pick up. It’s emotional and very well-written. And if you’re like me, it’ll sneak up on you a few days after you’ve finished it. Then again, the best ones often do.

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