Broken People

Sam Lansky's debut novel follows Sam, who has relocated to Los Angeles after a New York chapter that went badly wrong. Anxious and low, he is searching for a way to feel whole again. At a dinner party in the Hollywood Hills, he overhears talk of a wandering healer who claims he can mend emotionally wounded people within a few days.

Drawn to the idea of a fresh start, Sam books a weekend in the healer's care. The promised experience includes ancient ceremonies, plant-based medicine and visions of the sacred. The novel keeps asking whether the spirits the healer claims to summon are real at all, or whether the ghosts in Sam's own memories hold more power than any ritual.

By turns tender and sharp, funny and perceptive, the book is a meditation on truth and invention and on how the stories we tell shape our lives. It explores finding hope despite cynicism, closeness amid disorder, and a settled sense of comfort within oneself.