Nina LaCour

When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner. When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, will pull them apart again and again. At once exquisite and expansive, astonishing in its humanity and heart, Yerba Buena is a love story about two women finding their way in the world.

Yerba Buena

Lindsay

How pathetic it was to let someone she rarely saw have such a hold on her life.

Emilie felt such pride, serving Colette tea in a deep blue mug that she’d bought herself, in an apartment with her own name on its lease. But also the guilt— as though the mere facts of her life were acts of betrayal. She couldn’t make sense of the two.

she did what she did best: she fell out of herself and into his story.

“You don’t need to be sorry. I’m not asking you to tell me everything. I just want to know you.”

Yerba Buena quotes

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