Sag Harbor, NY, April 11 – The Permanent Press will publish the literary thriller WHO I THOUGHT YOU WERE early summer 2025 by first time novelist Michaela Spampinato, resident of Holliston, MA. A look at murder, love, and addiction under the shadow of the U.S.-Mexico border.
In a small town in New Mexico, not far from the Mexican border, a midnight train collides with a pick-up, and Toulouse’s husband Luke is dead. On the surface, they hadn’t had much in common but each other. She, an East Coast white girl, and he, brown and New Mexican, born and raised. After his sudden death, she is isolated in the town that was his, among families who had known each other for generations, before the border crossed them.
Then questions around his accident begin to arise. Lilly, a young local, confesses to the sheriff that she and Luke were lovers. What’s more, she accuses Toulouse of killing him because of the affair. Toulouse’s ex-boyfriend Max appears in town. Still withholding. Still indifferent. Toulouse finds herself drawn to him, and repelled, and furious as it becomes clear that someone took Luke from her. A drifter dangles information about the crash in exchange for money: he saw someone walking away from Luke’s pick-up just as the train collided with it. Fueled by a rageful desire to discover the truth about Luke’s death, Toulouse uncovers much of what the color of her skin had protected her from: dehumanizing Border Patrol agents, the greed of carpet-bagging real estate developers, teen drug dealers, and the addicted in their wake. The border that had always separated Luke from her, the long and wide gulf between their experiences, is revealed to her. She had never been stopped by the Border Patrol and asked if she were an American citizen. She had never been mistaken for the help. Her inability
to see and understand Luke is what haunts her. And as she tracks down his killer, she learns that addiction comes in all forms, and that the hungers that fuel us can lead to the worst kinds of betrayal, especially of those we love.
Michaela Spampinato was born in the suburbs of Philadelphia, attended Wesleyan University, and earned her MFA in Fiction at New Mexico State University. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two reasonably happy children. She teaches First Year Writing at Babson College.
Contact: Michaela Spampinato
646-202-3443
