A SMALL INDISCRETION

A California mom with a son in a coma has a libertine past that's come back to haunt her.

Ellison's debut novel is an emotional thriller of the Anita Shreve variety, with revelations that continue and relationships that evolve until the final pages. Annie Black is a lighting designer whose life has more or less exploded: First, she confesses to her husband some disturbing details about her youthful adventures as an office assistant in London and her recent trip back there. Three days later, an overflowing claw-foot bathtub falls through the ceiling over her store, The Salvaged Light, and wrecks the place. Later that night, her son and her salesclerk, a young woman named Emme Greatrex, are in a terrible car accident; her son is taken by helicopter to the hospital, and Emme disappears. Not long after, her husband asks for a separation and moves out. She begs him to stay: " 'It was one night, Jonathan. It was stupid. It was pointless.' He said nothing. Because the thing that had broken him was not the thing I was trying to explain away." Tantalizing clues like this are doled out with a generous hand, keeping the reader from getting bogged down in the complicated chronology. Will Robbie come out of the coma? Why did Jonathan move out? What happened to the people Annie left in London? Where is Emme Greatrex? Ellison keeps the mystery going by switching among Annie's life in London at age 20, parts of the recent past, and present-time diary-type chapters that cover the year following the accident, shuffled together in a way that fiendishly answers only one question at a time. 

Connoisseurs of domestic suspense will finish this book in a few breathless sittings, then wait eagerly for Ellison's next trick.