Sarah Damoff lives in Texas with her husband and children, where she is a social worker. Her work has appeared in Porter House Review, Ruminate Magazine, and Open Global Rights, among other publications. The Bright Years is her debut novel. Visit Sarah at SarahDamoff.com.

"Tender and heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful...will make the reader feel like they are actually living through it alongside the characters."--Booklist (starred review)

"Social worker Damoff's heartfelt debut focuses on the impact of alcohol addiction on a family over four generations...This family drama rings true."--Publishers Weekly

"This novel sparkles in its sentences, its texture, its big heart--THE BRIGHT YEARS is a vivid, forthright, and gorgeously written story of love in its many iterations." --CLAIRE LOMBARDO, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had and Same as it Ever Was

"THE BRIGHT YEARS is a moving portrait of inheritance and loss. A heart-breaker and heart-mender at once, this is a story that forces us to confront our vulnerabilities and secrets in order to find our strength and truth. A stunning debut!"--TAYARI JONES, author of An American Marriage

"To attempt to tell a convincing love story at this late stage in the history of the novel is to set the bar ambitiously high, and yet Sarah Damoff somehow pulls it off twice in a single book, penning two thoroughly persuasive, interrelated relationship histories, each with appealing texture and depth, one believable because of the pain it captures, the other a balm in the hope it implies. THE BRIGHT YEARS builds symphonically, polyphonically, reaching emotional crescendos and gliding into perfectly calibrated decrescendos that mimic the rhythms of real life. In its nuanced understanding of the psyche and its unsparing realism about human limitations even in the face of our desperate attempts to overcome them, this book, when it opens its sails to gale-force winds of feeling, leads one to shed one's sophistication and openly root for love, to cheer for it, even shed a tear for it, as Damoff sticks the landing and at long last it comes."--MATTHEW THOMAS, New York Times-bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves

"In THE BRIGHT YEARS, Sarah Damoff paints a loving portrait of a Texas family shadowed by the power of addiction. The journeys of Lillian, Jet and Ryan Bright are in all ways tender, tragic and triumphant and left me rooting for each character until the very end. A beautiful debut."--AMANDA CHURCHILL, author of The Turtle House

"Like all great books, THE BRIGHT YEARS will leave you with deep feelings of compassion and insight for the inevitable love and suffering we must all go through in order to fully live."--SIMON VAN BOOY, bestselling author of Sipsworth

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pub date: 2025-04-22

Length: 288 pages