On its surface, Sarah Damoff's debut novel, The Bright Years, is about a nuclear family struggling with a present affected by past experiences. As a young woman, Lillian placed a baby for adoption. Meanwhile, Ryan hopes to escape the specter of his abusive, alcoholic father. When they meet, both are desperate to build something beautiful out of their pain. They fall in love in a glittering montage: "He looks at me... like pain can't touch us. Never mind that it has touched us all our lives, and our parents before us." Damoff's moving prose reads like a held breath, even as hope for the future arrives in the form of their daughter, Georgette, whom they call Jet: "In many ways, Jet saves us. But salvation is not erasure--it's a redistribution of pressure."
Each character narrates their own section, and the sections bounce between years as Lillian holds onto her secret, Ryan descends into addiction, and Jet wonders how her mother can bear to let her father back in. When a seismic loss rocks the tentative stability they achieve, Damoff explores through Jet how the weight of love measures up against the twin burdens of anger and disappointment. Jet builds her own family as she learns that in order to truly live, she must embrace the pain that comes with it, not shut it out. With a title that intentionally belies the emotional depths within, The Bright Years is a dazzling, true-to-life depiction of adoration and damage, and the lovely ache of living as the pendulum swings between them. --Kristen Coates, editor and freelance reviewer