THE DRIFTER (February 21, 2017; William Morrow Trade Paperback Original) begins in the present day. For two decades, Elizabeth has tried to escape the ghosts of her past…tried to erase the painful memories…tried to keep out the terrifying nightmares. But twenty years after graduating from the University of Florida, her carefully curated life begins to unravel, forcing her to confront the past she’s tried so hard to forget.

Flashing back to 1990s Gainesville, Florida, Elizabeth and her two closest friends, Caroline and Ginny, are having the time of their lives in college—binge watching Oprah, flirting for freebies from Taco Bell, and breaking hearts along the way. But without warning, their world is suddenly shattered when a series of horrific acts of violence ravage the campus, changing their lives forever.

Sweeping readers from the exclusive corners of sorority life in the South to the frontlines of the drug-fueled, slacker culture in Manhattan in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, when Elizabeth is forced to acknowledge her role in the death of a friend in order to mend a broken friendship and save her own life, THE DRIFTER is an unforgettable story about the complexities of friendships and the secrets that can ultimately destroy us.

Christine is a Los Angeles-based writer. Before she moved to the West Coast and started her freelance career, she was an editor at W, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. Since then, she has written for publications including T The New York Times Style Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Town & Country, W, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Martha Stewart Living, Sunset, C California Style, Marie Claire, Self, Net-a-Porter’s Porter, and The Edit online magazine—among others.

When Christine began writing THE DRIFTER, she started by listening to the music she loved in 1990. Psychologists refer to our freaky ability to recall fully formed memories from our adolescence and early adulthood as the “reminiscence bump.” For reasons we don’t completely understand, the friendships, stories, events and thoughts from the third decade of our lives — our 20s — become our most vivid recollections. It makes perfect sense, then, that the music we hear during that time of our lives plays a big role in our life story, and in many ways, shapes our lives for decades to come.

As you read THE DRIFTER, I also encourage you to listen to Christine’s curated The Drifter: The Playlist on Spotify to experience some of the songs mentioned in the novel. Whether you experienced them the first time over twenty years ago, or are discovering them now for the first time, she hopes that hearing these songs makes you feel 20-something and equal parts excited and terrified by what your future holds.