MIA - by Leslie Bazzett (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A stylish, unsettling work of psychological suspense about an American woman, adrift in Mexico for a year, whose chance encounter with a glamorous older expat spirals into obsession and betrayal.

There's no one, there's only you.

When Sally, an American living in San Miguel de Allende, meets Louise outside her children's school, she's eager to immerse herself more deeply in the life of the city. In Mexico for just a year with her husband, an architect, Sally is entranced by Louise--her elegance, her harshness, her stories about Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac--and the two quickly become inseparable. Soon enough, Louise has begun calling her Mia and, at first playfully, then in earnest, introducing Sally as her daughter to a growing circle of friends.

By turns enthralled with the possibility of a new identity in Mexico and troubled by Louise's magnetic hold over her, Sally attempts to keep the relationship a secret from her husband. As the specter of Sally's troubled childhood looms, and Louise's self-mythologizing tightens its grip, the two women test the limits of reinvention--until their fictions threaten the security of Sally's flesh-and-blood family.

A taut, beguiling work of psychological suspense, Mia is a mother-daughter story turned on its head and a high-intensity fable about the limitations of playing a role that doesn't belong to you.

Review Quotes

"In this extraordinary debut novel, Leslie Bazzett invites us to the expatriate community of San Miguel de Allende, then drops us head first into a personal labyrinth in which a mother walks the fine line between good friendship and borderline obsession. Any woman who has sought a bit of reinvention will find Sally and Louise's relationship is as familiar as it is strange. In a voice reminiscent of Deborah Levy and Rachel Cusk, Bazzett has crafted a slow burn that, in the end, fully ignites and surprises. Mia is a great read."
--Katie Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Embassy Wife

About the Author

Leslie Bazzett's fiction debuted in New England Review and received "Special Mention" in that year's Pushcart Prize Anthology. Subsequent work has appeared in NER, Carolina Quarterly, West Branch, and Louisville Review, among other places. Her most recent story to appear in NER was listed as "Notable" in Best American Short Stories. She has been a finalist for a Rona Jaffe Award and a recipient of the NER Award for Emerging Writers. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, poet Michael Bazzett, and their two children. Mia is her debut novel.