THE INEVITABLE UNDOING OF ZAHARA DOUGLASS

After a meteoric rise within the National Ballet Theatre, Zahara Douglass, a 21-year-old Black ballerina, has the life she always dreamed of. But Zahara is emotionally detached, haunted by a fissure in reality that only she seems able to remember: When she was 16, she saw her twin sister, Annica, get into a car and disappear. Moments later, history seemed to rewrite itself—without Annica. Now, Zahara’s return to her hometown of Modesto, California, for a performance sparks painful memories and fuels her determination to seek answers. The looming threat of the Y2K millennium bug creates a sense of unease and danger, in contrast to prose filled with movement reflecting Zahara’s identity as a dancer. Characters stridently debate whether technology isolates people or connects them, with no consensus. Teaming up with a private investigator, Theo Morgan, Zahara digs deeper into a past that doesn’t seem to exist and finds evidence of fantastical abilities. The author weaves together threads of myth and technology, interspersing evocative tape recordings that Zahara’s late father left her, along with entries from Annica’s computer diary, bringing these characters’ vitality to the page. Zahara and Theo’s travels through California in search of answers unfold with echoes of a noir mystery, saturated with the ever-present question of who to trust and how much. Zahara’s quest for the truth unearths one of the book’s central preoccupations: What would you sacrifice for those you love, and are you prepared to live with the consequences?