Lookback Window

Growing up in suburban New York, Dylan lived through the unfathomable: three years as a victim of sex trafficking at the hands of Vincent, a troubled young man who promised to marry Dylan when he turned eighteen. Years laterlong after a police investigation that went nowhere, and after the statute of limitations for the crimes perpetrated against him have run outthe long shadow of Dylans trauma still looms over the fragile life in the city hes managed to build with his fianc, Moans, who knows little of Dylans past. His continued existence depends upon an all-important mantra:To survive, you live through it, but never look back.

Then a groundbreaking new lawthe Child Victims Actopens a new way foreword: a one-year window during which Dylan can sue his abusers. But for someone who was trafficked as a child, does money represent justicedoes his pain have a price? As Dylan is forced to look back at what happened to him and try to make sense of his past, he begins to explore a drug and sex-fueled world of bathhouses, clubs, and strangers apartments, only to emerge, barely alive, with a new clarity of purpose: a righteous determination to gaze, unflinching, upon the brutal men whose faces have haunted him for a decade, and to extract justice on his own terms.

By turns harrowing, lyrical, and beautiful, Hertzs debut offers a startling glimpse at the unraveling of traumaand the light that peeks, faintly, and often in surprising ways, from the other side of the window.

Hardcover, Aug 1st 2023