WHAT HAPPENED TO SOPHIE WILDER

A tender, eloquent debut novel about two young writers whose intertwining lives become a literary love story.

In college, Sophie Wilder and Charlie Blakeman were best friends, sometime lovers, and each other's most important reader. But they are young, confused, and confusing, and they eventually had an irrevocable falling out. Ten years later, Charlie publishes his first novel, which vanishes without a trace; Sophie, whose own book of short stories appeared to great acclaim soon after graduation, has married, become a practicing Catholic, and turned her back on fiction writing. One evening, in the house that Charlie shares with his charismatic cousin Max and assorted other literary scenesters, Sophie appears, shaken and withdrawn, clearly in need of help. Charlie is eager to turn back the clock and make good of what went awry when they were younger - but is he too late?

A novel of faith and love and friendship, WHAT HAPPENED TO SOPHIE WILDER is a beautiful, absorbing work about the redemptive power of storytelling.

Christopher R. Beha is an editor at Harper's Magazine and the author of a memoir, The Whole Five Feet. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Harper's, New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, The Believer, and elsewhere. He is the co-editor, with Joyce Carol Oates, of The Ecco Book of Contemporary American Short Fiction.

(A Sarah Burnes book for the Gernert Company)