16

She didn't call one guide. She called a legion.

Camille has spent nine years managing everyone's feelings but her own. So one ordinary Sunday morning, coffee in hand, she does something she hasn't done since she was a lonely child who saw things she couldn't explain: she asks for company.

What answers is a room full of women. Bet, warm and bustling, who's been with her since childhood. Tuesday, sharp-boned and nearly silent, who says exactly one word the whole book - and means it. A golden woman with no name who asks the only question that matters: what do you want? And, eventually, the friend Camille lost too young, and the grandmother she never got the chance to know at all.

Told in wry, aching, funny morning entries over coffee - sometimes tea, when the coffee runs out - 16:16 is a novella about the people who answer when we finally, quietly, call. About decentering the men we've organized our lives around. About the difference between being useful and being safe. And about learning, one ordinary Thursday pottery class at a time, how to become the woman you were always allowed to be.

For readers of Sarah Addison Allen, Alice Hoffman, and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.