Swear on This Life

Emiline is an adjunct creative writing instructor at UC San Diego who has built her adult life around avoiding her painful past. She grew up in Neeble, Ohio, a small, impoverished town, where her father had a violent alcohol addiction and her mother abandoned the family. She has told her boyfriend of seven years, Trevor, a former college quarterback now working as an assistant football coach, that her parents are dead. Their relationship is marked by emotional distance: They still live separately, rarely say "I love you," and fight often. Both Trevor and Emiline's roommate and fellow writer, Cara, urge her to draw on her own life for material, but she refuses.

When Cara discovers a bestselling debut novel called All the Roads Between by J. Colby and passes it to Emiline, Emiline recognizes from the first page that the story is a fictionalized account of her own childhood. The novel follows two children, Emerson and Jax, growing up at the end of a dirt road in a poor Ohio town. Emerson's mother has abandoned the family, leaving her with a father whose alcohol addiction has turned violent. Jax's father has similarly left, and his mother, Leila, works multiple jobs while struggling with addiction. Jax befriends the neglected Emerson, sharing food with her and converting a toolshed behind their houses into a refuge. Emiline realizes Jax is Jase (Jason Colbertson), her childhood best friend and first love whom she has not seen in over 12 years, and she is furious that he used her story without permission.

The novel-within-the-novel traces Emerson and Jax through adolescence. On Emerson's 13th birthday, she and Jax discover the body of Jax's older brother, Brian, floating in a rain-swollen creek. Leila tells Jax she wishes he had been the one to die, and the tragedy binds the two children closer. As teenagers, they navigate jealousy before admitting their feelings for each other. When Emerson's father catches them kissing, he beats Emerson so severely that Jax intervenes, punches the man unconscious, and drives her to the hospital. Her father is arrested, and Emerson is placed in foster care in nearby New Clayton.

These chapters force Emiline to confront memories she has spent years burying. She begins revealing her past to Trevor, admitting her parents are not dead, that her mother abandoned her, and that her father went to prison for child abuse. Trevor listens but struggles to engage emotionally.

In the novel, Emerson is placed with the Kellers, a strict elderly couple running a foster home. The youngest child, eight-year-old Sophia, becomes her confidante. A social worker informs Emerson that a previously unknown aunt, Becky, a creative writing professor at Berkeley, has agreed to take custody of her and bring her to San Francisco. When Mrs. Keller catches Emerson with Jax, she expels both Emerson and Sophia, though Emerson persuades the Kellers to let Sophia stay. Jax takes Emerson back to their shed, where she discovers he has been selling marijuana for Cal Junior, the menacing son of a local ranch owner, in exchange for use of his truck. She convinces him to stop. They are physically intimate for the first time before police arrive. In the novel, Emerson surrenders to protect Jax's future.

Emiline slams the book shut. In reality, Jase was the one who turned them in. She watched him mouth "I'm sorry" from the back of a police cruiser before being sent to live with her aunt in California. She tells Cara the full truth: She is Emerson, and the novel is based on her life.

Despite her anger, Emiline attends Jase's San Diego book signing. They have a tense exchange: She accuses him of lying, and he calls it artistic license, urging her to finish reading. Trevor arrives, having been alerted by Cara, and before Jase leaves with his agent, Andrea, he slips Emiline a note asking her to meet him at a nearby restaurant that night. In the parking lot, Trevor proposes, telling Emiline to marry him and forget Jase. She declines. At dinner, he proposes again with a ring, and she turns him down a second time.

That night, encouraged by Cara, her aunt Cyndi, and Cyndi's partner Sharon, Emiline meets Jase at the restaurant. He tells her he wrote the book for her, referencing a Kurt Vonnegut quote about writing for just one person. He confirms his relationship with Andrea is purely casual and that no other woman has compared to Emiline. He walks her home, kisses her softly at her door, and leaves the next day for a 12-city book tour.

Emiline takes a two-week leave and flies to Ohio. She finds her father in Dayton, now sober for 18 months and deeply repentant. He apologizes for his abuse, gives her the family property and a small savings, and provides the address of her mother, Diana, in Nashville. Emiline visits Diana and finds a cold, remorseless woman who shows no guilt for abandoning her daughter. Emiline tells Diana she forgives her and leaves, understanding that her mother's indifference is permanent, not something Emiline caused. In Nashville, she discovers Jase's book tour has brought him to the same city and finds him intoxicated at a bar. She helps Andrea get him to his hotel. Andrea privately tells Emiline that her arrangement with Jase is over and that he is clearly in love with someone else. Emiline also visits Jessie (the real Sophia) and the Bonners (the real Kellers) in New Clayton, learning that the family adopted all four foster children after Emiline left.

Jase drives to New Clayton to see Emiline. He takes her to the abandoned Neeble community pool, a place they dreamed of visiting as children, and kisses her there. They walk the dirt road to the empty foundations where their houses once stood. Jase tells her that everything good he wrote about Jax was actually about her: He reversed their qualities so she could see her own goodness from the outside. That night, they fall asleep side by side in her hotel room, and he leaves the next morning, making her promise to finish the book.

Back in San Diego, Emiline discovers bottles of prescription painkillers in Trevor's truck and learns he has an addiction he cannot control. She helps him enter a rehab facility and confesses that she kissed Jase. During Trevor's month in rehab, Emiline writes 10,000 words chronicling her discovery of Jase's novel and her journey of self-confrontation. Near the end of his stay, she notices a spark between Trevor and his physical therapist, Melissa, and gently ends their relationship. They part as friends.

Her supervisor, Professor James, praises Emiline's writing and connects her with Andrea, who expresses interest in representing her. Emiline moves to New York with Cara but feels isolated. She finally reads the last chapter of All the Roads Between: The fictional Emerson, now in her fifties and widowed from an unremarkable marriage, returns to the dirt road and discovers Jax living there, dying of lung cancer. They marry, and he dies in her arms five weeks later. The novel's final line is a dedication: "For my Em. Don't wait this long. Come let me love you" (295).

Jase wrote the book as a warning against letting fear and regret consume a lifetime. Emiline packs immediately, flies to Los Angeles, and drives to Jase's beach cottage. He opens the door and says, "Took you long enough" (300). She holds up his book and tells him the tragic ending will not be their story. In the epilogue, they live together in the cottage, writing and watching the ocean. When Jase asks if she wants to live there forever, she says nine months of the year, because during the school year they will need to be home. He puts his hand on her belly. He already knows she is pregnant.