R. O. Kwon

From bestselling author R. O. Kwon, an exhilarating, blazing hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life. At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Phillip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night. Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about a old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She's been told that if she doesn’t keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?

A Novel

Exhibit

I'd plotted, as a child, to give my life to the Lord. In college, I’d lost this faith. Isolated, grief-wild, I'd picked through ruins He'd left behind. If I could still love this orphan world, deprived of His salvific light, which parts of it might even I, broken as I came, find worth prizing?

. . . how artful bodies will be, retelling old stories.

In the afterlife I won't find, I'll sit with all the people I've lost, and we'll laugh at the prodigals we used to be. Once, long ago, we split apart. No such thing will happen again.

Exhibit quotes

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