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Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, leaving behind the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy.
Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern, yearning for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena.
The morning Emilie and Sara first meet at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But soon Sara's old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted, just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose. Will their love be more powerful than their pasts?
At once exquisite and expansive, astonishing in its humanity and heart, Yerba Buena is a testament to the healing qualities of a shared meal, a perfectly crafted drink, a space we claim for ourselves. Nina LaCour's adult debut novel is a love story for our time.
"Lyrical and ultimately hopeful. Yerba Buena―the 'good herb,' which is also the name of the restaurant where Sara and Emilie meet―carries the reader through the pain and symbolizes a better future." ―Booklist (starred review)
"LaCour writes with beauty and clarity about how a relationship is not a substitute for the characters' mutual need to love themselves." ―Publishers Weekly
"The rawness of Sara's and Emilie's struggles come through, making for a heartfelt story. A brisk, plot-driven, and entertaining novel." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Yerba Buena is at turns decadent and spare, intimate and elusive, as balanced, fragrant, and masterfully crafted as a fine cocktail in the hands of someone mysterious and beautiful. This book is a precious thing." ―Casey McQuiston, New York Times bestselling author of One Last Stop
"Nina LaCour's Yerba Buena is a love story for our time. I so admired its truth and candor, the lilting prose and the two compelling protagonists, Sara and Emilie, whose lives weave, break and bend towards each other until the novel's moving and deeply satisfying conclusion. Yerba Buena is an absolute joy to read." ―Tara Conklin, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Romantics
This information about Yerba Buena was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nina LaCour was born in Oakland, California, received her undergraduate degree from San Francisco State University, and returned to Oakland to receive an MFA in Creative Writing at Mills College. Her graduate thesis became her first novel, Hold Still, which received a William C. Morris honor from the American Library Association. Her other novels include, The Disenchantments, Everything Leads to You, and the Michael L. Printz Award-winner We Are Okay. She is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of You Know Me Well.
Still firmly rooted in the Bay Area, Nina loves cooking, gardening, and daytripping through the ever-inspiring regions of Northern California with her wife and their daughter.
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