A devastating fire forces a couple to reckon with the fractures in their marriage in Sarah Damoff’s layered family saga, THE BURNING SIDE. 

On a June evening in 2022, Leo Torres asks his wife, April, for a divorce. Later that night, the home they share with their two children --- toddler Sadie and baby Otto --- goes up in flames after a distracted April fails to turn off the stove’s burner when cooking dinner for the kids. The family escapes the blaze unharmed, but their house is uninhabitable. They move in with April’s loving, comfortably well-off parents, Deb and Billy Russo, as they try to figure out their next steps. 

"...[a] layered family saga... Damoff skillfully paints a picture of April and Leo’s rich, complex marriage... But in THE BURNING SIDE, family --- however unwieldy and difficult --- is too precious a thing to throw away lightly."

Deb and Billy welcome April and Leo with open arms. But the move brings more than its share of complications, as April and Leo struggle with when to tell the rest of her family (including her younger siblings, Josie and Cameron) about their pending split. Meanwhile, Deb and Billy have secrets of their own, both about the origins of their seemingly perfect marriage and about a health crisis that will upend everyone’s lives. 

Told in the alternating perspectives of April, Leo and Deb, and moving backward and forward in time, everyone in Damoff’s sophomore novel (following her acclaimed 2025 debut, THE BRIGHT YEARS) is reckoning with how past choices and events have shaped their present circumstances. “Life is a series of wild unknowns, and the past will always leave marks,” observes Deb, who knows a thing or two about how unexpected twists can lead to a life you never expected to be living. 

For Leo, who was raised by his emotionally distant aunt and uncle after he was abandoned by his parents, the Russos have offered him the unconditional love he’s always wanted. Joining the Russo clan allows him to “bury my former self and be relieved to do so.” Divorcing April means losing “the only real family” he’s ever had. But he feels he has no choice but to end the marriage after what he sees as a devastating betrayal. 

The well-meaning April, meanwhile, gradually realizes that she does not know her husband nearly as well as she thought she did. Early in their relationship, Leo, a high school teacher, and April, a reading tutor, step in to assist a troubled student who’s had a run-in with the police. The incident exposes their very different backgrounds, with Leo accusing his wife of wanting to help so that they “could pat each other on the back.” 

“You want to change people and then you want them to say thank you,” he gently chides her. Damoff suggests that Leo, with his humble background and troubled family history, is one of those projects. April loves her husband, but on some level she sees him as a person in need of saving. But as she turns her attention to helping others, whether it’s her students or her children, she ignores her own needs, until she wakes up one morning and realizes her “self-loathing” has become “an addiction.” 

Damoff skillfully paints a picture of April and Leo’s rich, complex marriage, from their early, optimistic days as newlyweds to the quiet resentments that build up over the years, unmentioned until they finally become too much for either to ignore. But in THE BURNING SIDE, family --- however unwieldy and difficult --- is too precious a thing to throw away lightly. Loving people when things are good is easy, her characters realize. It’s persevering through the difficult moments, such as a life-changing diagnosis or the dark isolation of postpartum depression, that demonstrates true love. 

“Depression and joy can both be uncomfortable, yet we have to allow for them in their turns,” April eventually realizes. The trials, if you can survive them, make a relationship stronger, and the moments that follow are all the sweeter for it.