BE WELL: Coming June 23, 2026

BE WELL

Fresh out of college and faced with the Great Recession of 2009, Ann Ward takes increasingly desperate measures to avoid moving back home while being drawn into a maybe-cult. What could go wrong? 
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Summer 2009: Brand-new college graduate Ann Ward has sent out nearly three hundred job applications, but nobody will employ her. The last thing she wants to do is leave Los Angeles, return to her desert hometown, and live in the shadow of her fame-hungry televangelist father–and it's starting to look like that's her fate. Thankfully, Ann's luck turns after a humiliating failed job interview, when she meets the magnetic founder of upscale holistic wellness collective Sagebrush. She's quickly drawn deep into the privileged, demanding world of Sagebrush, inventing Annaliese - a dubious new persona - to fit in.

But when her funds run out and her lies blow up, Ann must choose between facing reality or doing whatever she has to do in order to get the future she wants. Both a "funny ha-ha-" and a "funny oh no" read for anyone who survived the Great Recession, Be Well explores just how easy it is to believe in something unquestioningly–and lie to ourselves and others–when everything feels uncertain and the future isn't guaranteed.

Coming June 23, 2026 from Heliotrope Books. Pre-order information coming soon! 
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