Yerba Buena

Bestselling and award-winning YA author Nina LaCour's first adult book, which follows two women on a star-crossed path toward one another

When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, she's a sought-after bartender in Los Angeles, known for her inventive concoctions as much as the mystery surrounding her. Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern throughout the city. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner.

When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, pulls them apart again and again. They must choose if their love is stronger than their pasts when Emilie has finally found her own purpose and Sara's former life finally catches up to her, upending all she thought she wanted.

At once exquisite and expansive, astonishing in its humanity and heart, Yerba Buena is a love story for our time and a propulsive journey through the lives of two women finding their way in the world.