In her new novel, THE WRONG SIDE OF NIGHT, Patti Davis weaves in emotionally autobiographical elements that bring us on a journey to understand, through fictional characters, some of the dissonance and distance in her relationship with her mother, Nancy Reagan.
THE WRONG SIDE OF NIGHT tells the riveting tale of a young artist who is forced to reconcile the world that she thought she knew with a rapidly-shifting reality. Painter Tilly Austin is known for dusky street scenes and people partially hidden in the shadows. Her mother, Amber Austin, achieved enormous success with canvases filled with light and quaint images of happy families. When Amber dies, the past and its dark secrets take over Tilly’s life in unexpected ways.
Just before her mother’s burial, her brother—presumed lost with their father on 9/11, vanishing in the ash and rubble with no remains found—reappears and reveals why he has lived under another identity for eighteen years. As her past and present collide and throw the future into chaos, Tilly is forced to confront everything she has avoided for so long.
THE WRONG SIDE OF NIGHT centers on the broken threads of a family that never learned how to be a family. Examining the nuances of stepping into the future when so much of the past is a haunted landscape, it explores the costs and challenges of choosing who you want to be in this life, and accepting all the sorrows, joys and mysteries that led you here. Sharing elements from her life, Davis considers how the past weighs on the present and marks the future with uncertainty.
Patti Davis is an author, journalist and screenwriter. She has published non-fiction books, including The Long Goodbye, about losing her father, Ronald Reagan, to Alzheimer’s, and The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us, as well as multiple novels, including Till Human Voices Wake Us, The Blue Hour, and The Earth Breaks in Colors. She writes frequently for The Washington Post, where many of her recent op-eds concern breaking issues, as well as The New York Times, where she has been an active voice on current events and politics.