“The Burning Side” by Sarah Damoff

Sarah Damoff’s second novel, The Burning Side, is just as rich in poignant moments and nuanced characters as her first, The Bright Years, which Southern Literary Review selected as its 2025 Book of the Year.

The Burning Side explores two very different marriages, revealing both the best and the worst of committed love. One begins without love and with an unwanted pregnancy, yet slowly grows into something deep and enduring. The other starts with love at first sight but, after the birth of two children, gradually develops what appears to be an unbridgeable rift.

The novel opens in 2022 with a devastating house fire. April accidentally leaves a burner lit on the stove after her husband, Leo, tells her he wants a divorce. They go to bed unaware of the danger and awaken to smoke and a frantic, harrowing effort to escape with their children, Sadie and Otto. We quickly understand that theirs is a marriage fractured by betrayal—but is there only one betrayal, or have both partners failed each other in different ways?

Damoff then folds back to 2011 to show how April and Leo first met. As teachers of dyslexic teens, they share compassion, patience, and a belief in their students’ potential. April, especially, challenges her students with classics that others assume are beyond their reach. These early chapters make the unraveling of their relationship all the more painful.

Running parallel is the story of Deb and Bill, April’s parents. They provided their children with a stable, middle-class upbringing—the kind of security Leo never experienced. Yet no one would have guessed how emotionally barren the early years of their marriage were. They showed up for their family day after day, offering love and consistency, and in time learned to love each other. Their story stands in quiet contrast to April and Leo’s.

Now Deb and Bill face a new crisis: Bill’s early-onset Alzheimer’s. As Deb observes, “the anticipation of grief is a grief itself.” She wrestles with whether to move into a care facility or remain at home as Bill becomes increasingly confused and dependent:

“Identity is so entangled with place. But I have just as many concerns about who I would be while isolated at our house, with Billy becoming increasingly confused and dependent.”

Their dilemma is complicated when April, Leo, and the children move in after the fire. Everyone’s life has been upended by tragedy—and more heartbreak seems inevitable.

Sarah Damoff

Damoff writes with lyrical precision, weaving fire imagery throughout the novel as both literal catastrophe and emotional metaphor. Her characters feel achingly real in their flaws and vulnerabilities. The Burning Side is a compelling choice for book clubs, inviting discussion about what sustains a marriage, what destroys it, and how families face the difficult truths of aging and loss.

Sarah Damoff is the author of The Bright Years, which was a USA TODAY bestseller and is being translated into twelve languages. She lives with her husband and children in Texas, where she has been a social worker.