On a summer night in 1998, seventeen-year-old Dean Banville survives a suicide attempt. Like a supernova bending the fabric of spacetime, that single moment hurls Dean and everyone who loves him into an unfamiliar orbit.
His estranged parents reunite under one roof, determined to keep their son alive even as old fractures threaten to reopen. His older sister, Erica, cannot escape the memory of how close she came to losing him. Dean’s best friend, Andy Lawrence, longs to help him heal, only to realize his feelings run deeper than friendship—a truth that could cost him the acceptance of his deeply religious family.
As Dean, Andy, and Erica struggle to escape the gravity of that night, they are drawn together by questions as vast as the universe and as elusive as quantum physics. But when another devastating loss shatters the fragile future they have begun to imagine, Dean is forced to confront the far-reaching consequences of one impulsive act—and whether redemption is possible after the people you love have paid the price.
Praise for This is What Always Happens
“This Is What Always Happens, promises Maureen Traverse’s new book, but readers might not be so sure. It doesn’t always happen that characters are realized in startling, hungry, heartbreaking detail. It isn’t always that a story is told in prose so luminous that it seems to levitate. It is breathtakinigly rare to find families and friendships explored with such compassionate precision, such deep understanding, and such care. A teenage boy makes an impulsive mistake, and the trajectory of every life around him changes. Maybe this is what always happens, but Maureen Traverse’s exquisite intelligence allows us to understand in new and unforgettable ways.”
—Erin McGraw, author of Joy and 52 Other Very Short Stories
“This is What Always Happens is a study in empathy, honesty, and generosity, and Maureen Traverse captures the most tender nuances of her characters’ inner lives. The hopefulness here is hard-won, and Traverse understands how family can push you to the brink of despair but also rescue you from it.”
—Holly Goddard Jones, author of Antipodes and The Next Time You See Me
“This is What Always Happens is the best book I have ever read about time, and what it means, and what we do with it. And that’s not even the only thing it’s about. Loss and longing, the brain and the body, compassion, hunger, love—Maureen Traverse knows about these things, and what this book has to say about them is an antidote to the coldness all around us.”
—Kyle Minor, author of Praying Drunk and How to Disappear and Why
