HOT DESK

A mother’s and daughter’s journeys in the publishing world both begin with a lack of desk space.

Rebecca Blume doesn’t want to share her desk. It’s 2022, and the publishing house where Rebecca is an editor has decided to return to the office on a hybrid schedule, implementing a technique called “hot desking,” by which Avenue employees share their desks with people from another imprint, Hawk Mills, on their work-from-home days. Not only must Rebecca sacrifice her carefully curated decor, but her desk partner, Ben Heath, is a bit of a slob, leading to passive-aggressive, sometimes-flirty Post-it notes and online banter. If that weren’t stressful enough, the recent death of literary lion Edward David Adams—yes, he’s actually known as the Lion—has left the publishing world in a tizzy, and his widow, Rose, specifically requested Rebecca’s help in handling his estate. Rebecca has no known relation to the Lion, though her mother, Jane, did intern for his literary magazine in the 1980s. It turns out that the Lion wrote a manuscript before he died that intimates a love triangle among her mother, Rose, and himself. It won’t be long before everyone will want to get their hands on the posthumous manuscript, including the Lion’s party animal son, Atticus, and Rebecca’s own hot-desk partner. In a debut spanning decades, Dickerman leads readers on a funny, heartwarming journey through two generations’ involvement in the publishing industry. The author touches on the AIDS epidemic and the #MeToo movement, as well as exploring female friendship and post-pandemic attempts at a new normal, adding hints of romance and comedy. Jane and Rose’s relationship in the ’80s literary scene is the standout plot by far, and readers will be eager to learn what really occurred between the two young women all those years ago. The story has a lot of moving parts, but once all the pieces finally come together, readers will find a touching, satisfying ending.

A unique, decades-spanning story of friendship, love, and literature.