[PREORDER] My Darling Clementine: A Novel

Release Date: July 20, 2027

Juicy, fizzy and ripe for the picking, My Darling Clementine surveys a woman who is obsessed, unraveling, and utterly convinced she’s turning into a clementine—a sticky debut that exposes the dark underbelly of romantic fantasies and asks how far is too far to go in the name of love.

Inara is changing.

When thirty-something poetry professor Inara Barber abandons her domestic life in favor of a new job at a Louisiana liberal arts college she never expected to meet someone like Sawit. A beautiful and flighty artist who wears a distinctive orange-scented perfume, Sawit offers Inara an escape from her collapsing inner life. Every part of Inara’s new life seems magical: the lush heat of swampy Louisiana, the citrus groves, the impressive university, and of course her dazzling new colleague, Sawit. As their tentative friendship grows, Inara suppresses thoughts of her ex-wife, the financial disaster of her pending divorce, and her own miscarriage months earlier.

Before she knows it, Inara finds herself falling into familiar patterns of unhealthy obsession – despite Sawit’s engagement to a man. It's much easier to focus on someone shiny and new instead of processing what she left behind—and why. Unable to consummate her feelings for Sawit, Inara channels her desire into an increasingly deranged consumption of citrus fruit. As Inara becomes consumed by Sawit, her behavior continues to grow more erratic and her body begins to change in ways that can’t be readily explained—her skin takes on a new, tangerine-bright hue, and sweet, fragrant juice leaks from unexpected orifices. As the lines between reality and fantasy blur, Inara must reconcile her obsession and rebuild her own crumbling identity or she risks losing herself completely—and beyond human recognition—to her new love.

In turns dreamy and unnerving, My Darling Clementine is an exploration of one woman's desperate attempt to romanticize her life and escape her own pain, only to find her mind and body slowly unravelling in the process.