“But these are only a few possible arcs to a life, a handful of shooting stars in the night sky. Change one thing and everything changes. A tremor here sets off an earthquake there. A fault line deepens. A wire gets tripped.”
On one fateful night, three teenagers go on a reckless late night drive. It results in the death of a young woman, an accident that has reverberations across decades. Signal Fires (Knopf) by Dani Shapiro is the story of how one family’s dark secret can spiral out of control.
ONE LIE SHAPES A LIFE
In her first novel in 15 years, Dani Shapiro meditates on the question of what if, imagining all the branching parts of reality that might have been, if only one decision had been made differently. Shapiro paints a portrait of how regret and grief shape our lives and our relationships.
As the years pass for siblings Theo and Sarah Wilf, the accident from their teenage years is a constant thrum in the back of their minds. Sarah tries to drown the past in alcohol and affairs, while Theo hopes a successful career will be enough to forget the lie he told that night.
Through all the chaos, the only constant in the Wilfs’ worlds becomes their grief, their guilt and the truth they want to keep buried. But those feelings take new shape as the decades pass, the pandemic roars in the background, parents grow older and the past is resurfaced.
FAMILIES CONVERGE ACROSS DECADES
Told through multiple perspectives that jump between 1985 and 2020, we see the inner lives of two families on the same street. Each section provides a glimpse into a new element of the story, dotting crucial moments in the characters’ lives with signal fires.
With a timeline scattered across this novel’s horizon, we glimpse the lives of the teenagers in a car crash and parents coping with the past and a murky future. All this is brought into focus by a curious neighborhood boy who recognizes the points at which everyone’s lives converge.
SHAPIRO CAPTURES HUMAN EMOTION
Dani Shapiro is intimately familiar with memoir and non-fiction, so that even her fiction feels like it belongs to someone real. Her writing is trademarked by a grasp of what it means to be human and to forge a life overshadowed by inexplicable emotion.
Signal Fires is a breathtaking character-driven story that doesn’t shy away from the love, loss and loneliness of human existence. The novel gravitates towards the existential in a way that is comforting rather than daunting, emphasizing that connection and love are the most valuable parts of life.
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About Dani Shapiro:
Dani Shapiro is a bestselling novelist and memoirist and host of the podcast Family Secrets (now in its sixth season). Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue and Time. She has taught at Columbia and New York University and is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference. Her new novel, Signal Fires, was published in October 2022.
