“‘No one was less likely to take her own life.’
That’s what her Oxford thesis advisor wrote. From the moment I stumbled across the obituary, late at night when I couldn’t sleep, I was captivated, and it wasn’t the terrible details of her death: That she leapt from the balcony of a high rise in Century City. That she was 27, and a newlywed.”

So begins Jessica Teich’s quest to unravel a mystery: the suicide of someone she never met.

Bright and accomplished, with a loving family, Jessica knows she should be happy. But a violent childhood has left its mark. Jessica fears she will never be free of her past—until she discovers the obituary of a young woman, whose life is a ghostly echo of her own.

Can Jessica discover what drove this brilliant young woman to kill herself? And will discovering the truth save Jessica from the fissures tearing apart her own life?

Part psychological memoir, part literary thriller, The Future Tense of Joy is the luminous account of one woman’s efforts to free herself, and her family, from the demons of the past. Witty, brave and suspenseful, the book has been hailed by Meryl Streep as “beautiful, compassionately imagined.” Steve Martin called it “a daring and intimate journey into the soul of motherhood.”