Borderlines: A Memoir

What would you do if your best friend was also your worst enemy?

When Caroline Kraus leaves behind her sheltered, upper-middle-class home in St. Louis for San Francisco following the death of her mother, she is searching for clarity and a fresh perspective to help her escape her mother’s ghost. Instead, in a dreamlike city of beatnik bookstores and coffeehouses, she meets Jane.

Bewitching and free-spirited, Jane offers Caroline the warmth, intuitive understanding, and female companionship she craves, and soon the two women are inseparable. But gradually, Caroline discovers that behind the intensity that makes the friendship so intoxicating lies a dangerous, symbiotic stranglehold. As their lives and psyches become evermore intertwined, Jane begins to reveal some disturbing qualities and pulls Caroline further into her troubled depths. And as her subtle manipulations blossom into emotional blackmail, financial ruin, alarming promiscuity, and ultimately, physical aggression, Caroline must fight to regain her sense of self, and her understanding of where Jane ends and she begins.

Gripping and unforgettable, Borderlines distills the author’s terrifying experience into a mesmerizing memoir that will hold you captive until the last page. At its heart lies an unflinching look at the potent, hidden dynamics beneath the surface of any intimate relationship—and the dangerous blurring of individual boundaries that can occur when these dynamics are unleashed. An extraordinary tale that illuminates the power of love, loss, loyalty, and grief, Borderlines is an unprecedented account of the dark side of friendships between women, and marks a striking literary debut.