Sarah Damoff is a writer, and she is also a social worker.
Her debut novel, The Bright Years, is about a lot of the subjects and themes she encounters in her work, namely addiction—its intractable hold, its long, damaging tentacles.
In The Bright Years, we meet the Bright family in Texas. The novel is told from the points of view of Ryan and Lillian Bright and their daughter Georgette.
Ryan and Lillian love each other. But Lillian has been harboring a deep secret about the fact that she once had a child—a son—with another man.
Ryan has a secret, too. He is an alcoholic. It is a secret he’s held on to for a long time. It’s done its damage just the same—and threatens to continue to fracture the veneer of their mostly happy family life when it all comes out in the open.
Georgette is caught in the middle. And she herself is suffering in other ways, too.
When the son Lillian had placed for adoption so many years before comes in search of his birth mother, Georgette is forced to face the many losses of her past, including the ones she has inherited from her parents and grandparents.
The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff is a multigenerational family saga that underscores the ways that the Bright family tries to navigate and survive addiction, grief, shame and the losses that loving deeply can bring to our lives. Secrets and regrets, forgiveness and grace—all figure in this tender story about love in its many forms.
Sarah Damoff is the author of The Bright Years. It’s published by Simon & Schuster. She is a social worker who lives in Texas with her husband and children.
Learn more about the author here.
