A fiercely inspired fiction debut in which two young women—an actress and an academic—face what really happened the summer they were twelve, when a handsome stranger abducted them

“Everyone thought we were dead. We were missing for nearly two months; we were twelve. What else could they think?” —Lois

“It’s always been hard to talk about what happened without sounding all melodramatic … Actually, I haven’t mentioned it for years, not to a goddamned person.” —Carly May

When precocious Lois and pretty Carly May were twelve years old, they were kidnapped, driven across the country, and held in a cabin in the woods for two months by a charismatic stranger. Nearly twenty years later, Lois has become a professor, teaching British literature at a small college in upstate New York, and Carly May is an actress in Los Angeles, drinking too much and struggling to revive her career. When a movie with a shockingly familiar plot draws the two women together once more, they must face the public exposure of their secret history and confront the dark longings and unspeakable truths that haunt them still.

Pretty Is beautifully defies ripped-from-the-headlines crime-story expectations and announces the debut of a masterful new storytelling talent.