YARA

From the author of Maidenhead, a reverse cautionary tale about a young woman exploring the boundaries of sex and belonging in the early 2000s.

Distraught that her teenage daughter is in love with a woman a decade older, Yara's mother sends Yara away from their home in Brazil on a Birthright trip to Israel for Jewish youth. Freed from her increasingly controlling and jealous girlfriend, Yara is determined to forge her own path and follow her desires.
But Birthright takes a debaucherous turn, and Yara flees Israel for Toronto, where she is forced to reframe her relationship, exploring the possibility that it might have been abusive. From there she heads for California, where she plays with the line between erotic film and real life. As Yara wanders, she tries to keep her head above water, connecting the dots between the lands in which she finds herself, the places she has been, and the places she is headed.

TAMARA FAITH BERGER writes fiction, non-fiction, and screenplays. She is the author of Lie With Me and The Way of the Whore (which were collected by Coach House Books as Little Cat), Maidenhead, and Kuntalini. Maidenhead won the 2012 Believer Book Award. Her fifth book, Queen Solomon, was nominated for a Trillium Book Award. She lives and works in Toronto.