My Name Is Venus Black - A NovelPaperback

In this stirring, life-affirming debut novel, a young woman must reconcile her past with its far-reaching consequences on her quest for redemption.I think about this a lot lately, trying to figure out how I got here. Venus refuses to talk about what happened or why, except to blame her mother. I trace my life back in time, looking for all those places in the past where, if I could change one key detail, I would never have seen what I saw or done what I did that terrible February night.Venus Black is a straitlaced, straight-A student obsessed with the phenomena of astronomy—until the night she commits a shocking crime that tears her family apart and ignites a media firestorm.

Estranged from her mother, and with her brother still missing, she sets out to make a fresh start, skittish and alone. Adding to the mystery, Venus’s developmentally challenged younger brother, Leo, suddenly goes missing.Five years later, Venus emerges from prison with a suitcase of used clothes, a fake identity, and a determination to escape her painful past. But as new people enter her orbit—including a romantic interest and a young girl who seems like a mirror image of her former lost self—old wounds resurface, and Venus realizes that she can’t find a future while she’s running from her past.In this gripping story, debut novelist Heather Lloyd brilliantly captures ordinary lives upended by extraordinary circumstances.

Told through a constellation of captivating voices, My Name Is Venus Black explores the fluidity of right and wrong, the meaning of love and family, and the nature of forgiveness.