The key ideas

The Burning Side

Sarah Damoff, 2026

One June night in Texas, a house is on fire. A few hours before the fire, Leo told his wife he wanted a divorce. Now April, Leo and their two small children are living with her parents, in a house where everyone has a secret. And April’s father, a cheerful dentist, starts mixing up his granddaughter with his daughter.

Who it is for

For readers who love family novels with no good guys and no bad guys. For anyone whose marriage has been through a crisis, and anyone who has watched someone close lose their memory. For anyone who wonders what is left of love once trust is broken.

Sometimes. But mostly they need each other in order to get a more complete memory. Like a puzzle.

The night the kitchen burned

June 2022, Argyle, a small town outside Dallas, one in the morning. April runs out of the burning house with her son Otto on one arm and a book in the other. Her husband, Leo, is still inside, pulling their daughter Sadie out of bed.

The fire is coming from the kitchen. Glass bursts, and smoke punches through a window like a fist. Leo bolts out barefoot, his daughter on his shoulder. He is wearing an ancient T-shirt and American flag swim trunks: the first things he grabbed in the dark.

April thinks back to dinner. She was boiling pasta for the kids, and Leo quietly said he wanted a divorce. She had been expecting it. But did she turn off the burner?

She pushes the book into her husband’s hand and runs to her daughter.

At 1:19 Leo gets a text from his mother-in-law: “Stay with us.” For the last few weeks he has been sleeping on the floor of his son’s room. He wants to end this marriage, not move into the house where his wife grew up. But he looks at April, at the children, and knows he will go.

In the police car they sit shoulder to shoulder and look out the window at the burning house. It is easier to look at the house than at each other.

Part One. The drawing on the fridge

In the morning everyone sits at the table in Dallas, on Lexington Avenue, in the house where April grew up. She is thirty-four, with honey-blond hair and dyslexia. She used to be a reading tutor. Her mother, Deb, small and determined, has already baked an egg and spinach quiche. Her father, Billy, is a dentist. Her sister Josie, an actress, laughs at Leo’s swim trunks, and everyone laughs with her.

Leo Torres is thirty-eight. He is tall, with black hair and green eyes, and he teaches history to teenagers. April’s family has become the only real family he has ever had.

In the afternoon they drive out to the house. The kitchen is black, with no roof above it. On the fridge, one of Sadie’s drawings has survived: Daddy’s hair is a single black line, and across the top are the letters FAMLEE. April asks, “Are we getting divorced? Is that really what you want?” The word “want” makes Leo furious.

At night he lies down in her childhood bed, under the comforter with the lilac pattern. April puts her arms around him. He asks why, of everything, she carried his book out of the fire. Leo self-published his novel Seventh City, and she spent months helping him revise it. She doesn’t know. She kisses him and whispers that it doesn’t have to mean anything. He answers, “It always means something.”

April realizes he is thinking of Cody, of another man. He is always thinking of Cody.

In the morning Leo is gone.

Read in Livria

About the author

Sarah Damoff lives in Texas with her husband and children. Before this book she published the novel The Bright Years. The Burning Side came out from Simon & Schuster in May 2026.

All books by this author: Sarah Damoff

Terms from the book

  • Alzheimer’s disease
  • Waco
  • Argyle: A small town in Texas, an hour’s drive from Dallas. April and Leo’s house stands here on four acres of land, and so does the school where Leo teaches history.
  • Lexington Avenue: The street in Dallas where April’s parents, Deb and Billy Russo, live. All three of their children grew up in this house.
  • dyslexia: A condition that makes reading hard: letters get jumbled and swap places. April has lived with it since childhood, which is why she writes in pencil, so that she can erase the backward letters.
  • Odessa: A town in West Texas, named like the Ukrainian Odesa. Leo was born here and spent his early childhood in a trailer.
  • Greenwood Hills: A senior community with medical care, half an hour’s drive from the Russos’ house. Deb and Billy will have their own apartment there, with a kitchen.

All terms

Similar books