For Carolyn Lundquist, who grew up in the shadow of her father’s untimely and mysterious death, the approach of her daughter’s second birthday sparks memories of an isolated childhood that makes her worry for the future of her own nascent family. When her mother refuses to come clean about the past, Carolyn reconnects with her father’s kin and learns about her dad’s bipolar disorder, and the fine line between conformity and bohemian excess her parents walked during their last drama-filled year in sixties Louisville. Spurred by Carolyn’s quest, her rugged high school English teacher husband Peter gets swept back into traumas from his own childhood, leading to an opioid overdose, his mysterious disappearance—and Caroline’s frantic search to find him. Torn between the demands of her own embryonic family and a hunger for crucial knowledge about her past, Carolyn must decide how to keep herself and her daughter safe and Peter from embarking on a self-destructive journey.

Told in alternating nineties and sixties timelines, Border States will appeal to readers of secret-infused family dramas such as Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, and We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange.