The Lookback Window

A fearless debut novel of resilience, transcendence, and the elusive promise of justice.

Growing up in suburban New York, Dylan lived through the unfathomable: three years as a victim of sex trafficking at the hands of Vincent, a troubled young man who promised to marry Dylan when he turned eighteen. Years later--long after a police investigation that went nowhere, and after the statute of limitations for the crimes perpetrated against him have run out--the long shadow of Dylan's trauma still looms over the fragile life in the city he's managed to build with his fianc , Moans, who knows little of Dylan's past. His continued existence depends upon an all-important mantra: To survive, you live through it, but never look back.

Then a groundbreaking new law--the Child Victims Act--opens a new way foreword: a one-year window during which Dylan can sue his abusers. But for someone who was trafficked as a child, does money represent justice--does his pain have a price? As Dylan is forced to look back at what happened to him and try to make sense of his past, he begins to explore a drug and sex-fueled world of bathhouses, clubs, and strangers' apartments, only to emerge, barely alive, with a new clarity of purpose: a righteous determination to gaze, unflinching, upon the brutal men whose faces have haunted him for a decade, and to extract justice on his own terms.

"Hertz writes with a powerful blend of publicly experienced scene and deeply private interiority... he] expertly presents both the rapturous fa ade of post-closet gay life and the cracks in its hastily constructed foundation," (Slant). Hertz's debut is "cathartic and revelatory... and] a gritty recovery story that packs a punch" (The Bay Area Reporter). It offers a startling glimpse at the unraveling of trauma--and the light that peeks, faintly, and often in surprising ways, from the other side of the window.