Animal

Joan is a woman in her late thirties who has spent her life moving through the wants of men. After a former lover shoots himself in front of her at a New York restaurant, she flees to a canyon house in Los Angeles to find Alice, a younger woman connected to a violent event in Joan's childhood that she has never fully faced. As Joan circles Alice and narrates her own history of desire, abuse, and survival, the book builds toward a reckoning with the trauma that has shaped every relationship she has ever had.