Boom Town

The novel opens on a Thursday in June as Lady Josephine, an unhoused older Black woman, stumbles through woods near Atlanta's Chattahoochee River. Near her campsite, she notices red fabric trapped in the rocks. The current shifts, and a human arm surfaces. The narrative jumps back 10 days, told through alternating perspectives and timelines, to trace how the body arrived there.

Lyriq, whose real name is Micah Michelle Johanssen, manages dancers at Boom Town, a notorious Atlanta strip club. She recalls hiring Damaris Wilburn, an inexperienced 19-year-old whose cousin Tink arranged her audition. Lyriq hired her partly because she owed Tink a debt and partly because Damaris bore a startling resemblance to Felice Jade Carothers, a former headliner known as Lucky. Felice and Lyriq once reigned as the Lovely Ladies, Boom Town's headline duo, and carried on a secret love affair until Lyriq sabotaged the relationship. After Lyriq left for breast cancer treatment, Felice vanished. Lyriq trained Damaris and christened her "Charm."

In the present, Damaris has missed her shift. Dejuan Taylor, a young man who rents Damaris a basement apartment at his mother's house, arrives at the club asking for her. She hasn't been home in days. Then Thomas McIntyre, a wealthy white man Lyriq dreads, enters.

Interspersed with Lyriq's present-day narration are chapters labeled "Before," in which Felice tells her own story. She recalls Thomas pursuing her at Boom Town and being rejected. He returns two weeks later. During a private dance, his questions about Lyriq overwhelm Felice with unresolved feelings for the woman she loves, and she flees the room crying. Eventually, Felice meets Thomas at a coffee shop he owns. They develop a brief friendship, and she enjoys being treated as a person rather than a commodity.

The friendship turns violent when Bones, Boom Town's general manager, summons Felice to Jade VIP, one of the club's ultra-private rooms, where Thomas waits. During a dance, he becomes aggressive, and the encounter escalates into rape. Felice wakes the next morning at home in severe pain, her memories fragmentary.

In the present, Lyriq investigates Damaris's disappearance. She finds Thomas's business card in Damaris's locker, then discovers a near-identical card in a box of Felice's belongings, along with an old flip phone whose last outgoing text reads: "Just found out I'm pregnant." She connects Thomas to both missing women.

Her investigation deepens. She traces Thomas's real estate holdings and discovers he co-owns Boom Town. Bones reveals that Felice introduced Thomas as an investor and claims he fired Felice, contradicting his earlier story. When Lyriq tells Bones she witnessed the rape, he responds coldly. After she reveals Damaris was underage, Bones slaps her and threatens her life. She wakes inside Jade VIP, where Bones placed her unconscious body, and spots a ceiling camera confirming Bones knew about the assault. Desperate, Lyriq drives to the McIntyre home and confronts Thomas's wife, LaBrettney, demanding to know where Damaris is. Thomas later corners Lyriq at the club, threatening to shut everything down if she approaches his family again. He refers to Damaris in the past tense.

The "Before" chapters reveal Felice became pregnant from the rape. Unable to reach Lyriq, she called Thomas, who assumed someone else was the father. Felice named "Micah" without revealing this was a woman. Thomas connected her with LaBrettney, who needed an assistant for her consultancy. They became genuine friends. Thomas moved Felice into his Old Fourth Ward condo, but nothing felt like her own. At 35 weeks, Felice confessed the baby was Thomas's. He froze, promised a trust fund, and left.

A pivotal chapter narrated by LaBrettney reveals she has long known Thomas's secrets. When he demanded Felice be "disposed of," LaBrettney pretended to comply, presenting a severed wig ponytail as proof. In reality, she contacted Felice, learned the truth, and moved her to a hidden loft. She later brought the baby home with a fabricated adoption story. Thomas wept and named the girl Felicity, never questioning the deception.

Part Two shifts to Damaris's journal entries. She has found Felice's journal locked in a china cabinet at Thomas's condo and writes in it, addressing her entries to "Lady Luck." She explains she stole $10,000 from Boom Town to help Tink, whose safe house for trafficking survivors was raided. Her backstory parallels Felice's: Adopted by Evangelical parents, Damaris was groomed from age 13 by Todd Vickery, a youth group leader four years her senior. She became pregnant at 19, terminated the pregnancy, and was expelled from her family. She moved to Atlanta after discovering Tink, a biological cousin, through a DNA test.

Thomas initially seemed different and offered Damaris a nanny job caring for Felicity. After the theft, he hid her in his condo, then grew increasingly controlling: He interrogated her, confiscated her phone, and moved her to a locked lake house on Lake Lanier, a reservoir north of Atlanta with a history of racial violence. Her final journal entry ends abruptly as Thomas arrives early.

In a chapter told in close third person, Damaris wakes in the trunk of a car, hands tied, naked. She reconstructs what happened: Thomas told her about Felice, then approached with a pillow and smothered her. Damaris froze from a trauma response and went limp. Thomas, believing her dead, never checked for a pulse.

Simultaneously, Lyriq treks through the woods carrying a shovel and rope. Her text campaign from Felice's flip phone succeeded: By sending messages mimicking Felice's voice, she convinced Thomas he was receiving contact from Felice's spirit. He confessed via text, admitting he had Felice and "the unborn child" killed. That morning, he texted "It is finished," which Lyriq interprets as confirmation he has harmed Damaris. At a clearing, Lyriq trips Thomas with the shovel and strikes him with a rock. A car alarm sounds nearby as Damaris escapes the trunk. Afterward, Lyriq encounters Lady Josephine near the river; Lady Josephine gives her a clean Metallica T-shirt in exchange for her bloodied one and burns it.

A news broadcast identifies the body Lady Josephine found as Thomas Jefferson McIntyre, an Artists and Repertoire (A&R) music executive. In Part Four, Felice narrates from a mountain cabin, revealing she is alive. LaBrettney had panicked after Lyriq showed up at the McIntyre home and fled with Felice and baby Felicity. They watch the news of Thomas's death. The baby points at his photo and says "Dada!"

Lyriq can now afford breast reconstruction surgery thanks to funds Damaris left behind: Coded instructions from a hidden spot at Tink's house led to savings stashed at Dejuan's home, and Dejuan later delivered $20,000 more from Damaris as repayment for the theft. Lyriq asks her doctor, Dr. Kia Chamblee, to call her Micah, reclaiming her real name.

A month later, Damaris visits the McIntyre home with Dejuan and sees Felicity on the hip of a woman who looks exactly like her own reflection. She pulls Felice's journal from her bag. They lock eyes. Damaris says, "Lady Luck?" just as Felice asks, "Where'd you say you're from again?" The resemblance between them hints at a biological connection.

In the epilogue, Micah finds Lady Josephine and returns a clean Metallica T-shirt, the one Lady Josephine gave her in exchange for a bloodied shirt on the night of the killing. Micah hands her money and connects her with Tink, who now runs a shelter. The novel closes with Lady Josephine's quiet affirmation: "One thing about me, Lady Josephine? I try to do what's right, and I'm a woman of my word."