Until the Sun Shines Again

Book One of Somewhere Between Night and Morning

I was born under a full moon in Denpasar, the oldest of four.

Our house had weather, and you learned to listen for it. For his engine turning into our street. For the gate. For the keys. On the bad nights, my sisters and my brother climbed under my blanket, and I held the flashlight and told them stories until the stories were louder than the house.

But nobody holds a flashlight for you.

My mother had one rule for me, and she said it so often I could finish it for her: never make a girl feel the way he made me feel.

Years later, I sat on my best friend's front step, my phone hot against my ear. I didn't have a house of my own anymore. The girl I had loved for almost seven years, the first person who ever held the flashlight for me, went quiet for so long I thought the call had dropped. I asked her if something was wrong. I heard her take a breath. "I don't know anymore."

This is the story of everything that led to that call, and everything it cracked open. The dark I grew up in. The love I thought would protect me. The engagement that never was, just two kids telling the world a story so it would leave them alone. Four friends who always showed up with the engine already running. And the long wait between night and morning.

Until the Sun Shines Again is a novel inspired by true events, told in ten parts named for the times of a day, from Dawn to Moonrise: one long day, and the sun going down, little by little.

A note before you read: this book talks about domestic violence, a childhood spent afraid at home, and heartbreak. It's told gently, but honestly. At the end of the book there's a page of places in Indonesia you can reach out to, if you ever need them.