Perris, California

Stark debuts with an emotionally charged portrait of two women’s painful family histories and their uneasy reunion in California’s Inland Empire. Tessa Jenson, pregnant with her third child at 27 and struggling to raise two rambunctious young children, runs into her high school friend and lover, Mel, who’s recently returned to town after a decade away. At 16, the girls were broken up by Mel’s mother, who disapproved of their relationship, though it’s Mel whom Tessa feels bitter toward. Now, the women attempt to renew their friendship, which adds to the ongoing tension in Tessa’s marriage with Henry, who knows how much she loved Mel as a girl and whose own mother’s constant presence makes it difficult for Tessa to find her bearings as a parent. Exacerbating those challenges are Tessa’s memories of postpartum depression following her first daughter’s birth, which are triggered by her pregnancy and had to do with her feelings about her own mother. In vivid flashbacks, Stark gradually doles out details of the physical and sexual abuse Tessa and her late mother endured at the hands of her stepfather and his son, deepening the well-developed theme of strained mother-daughter relationships. Fans of Dorothy Allison or Pam Houston ought to seek this out. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea Assoc. (Mar.)