Before We Arrived by Jodie Pine

An intimate and tangled novel that delicately dissects grief and the difficulties of healing, Before We Arrived by Jodie Pine is a nuanced and emotionally charged character-driven drama. In a time-leaping web of interlinked memory, three people seek redemption after bearing more than their fair share of inherited hardship and systemic trauma. Rivka’s compulsive compassion, Henry’s quiet isolation, and Jayce’s haunted history are gradually unraveled as their unfiltered stories overlap across space and time. From radical empathy and epigenetics to internalized racism and mental health epidemics, this generation-spanning story explores a range of existential turning points and contemporary crises with unflinching honesty, which is both heartrending and inspiring.