We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Jen Michalski’s All This Can Be True, which releases on June 3, 2025 with Keylight Books. For fans of Modern Lovers and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo comes a tender queer romance about one woman’s rediscovery of choice, hope, and wild love in the wake of her husband’s coma.
EXCERPT
Nobody in the VIP tent would want to meet The Clit Girls, Quinn had figured. Since they weren’t a headliner, they’d played an early set, two o’clock in the afternoon, and their manager had arranged their press junket in the morning. Now, with the rest of the night ahead of them and an open bar in the corner of the tent, the night was inviting and dangerous at the same time.
“Let’s have one drink and get back to the van,” Cecilia said, twirling her dirty blond hair into a ponytail atop her head. Her shoulders and arms were still shiny with sweat from their set and the heat. When Cecilia said let’s, Quinn knew she meant her and Quinn. The other members of the band, Lesley and Pam, could do what they pleased. After all, they weren’t dating Cecilia. They hadn’t been “discovered” by Cecilia the way Quinn had.
“Why don’t we hang back, see if we can catch Spoon when they come off stage?” Quinn grabbed a bottle of beer, whoever was sponsoring Bonnaroo, out of tub filled with ice. She planned to stay away from hard liquor because liquor had a habit of looking the other way while she did stupid things.
“Why?” Cecilia’s hand cuffed Quinn above the elbow as she waited for her drink. “You want to fuck Britt Daniel?”
“No, but I’d love to talk about his song arrangements,” Quinn answered, as if what she said would make Cecilia somehow less jealous. She could have said she was joining the sisterhood, and Cecilia would assume it was because she had the hots for one of the nuns. She turned around, hoping Pam or Lesley would chime in—at least that’s who she figured was standing behind them in line. But it was a man wearing only cargo shorts and some cheesy-looking cowrie shell necklace. His strawberry-blond hair was pulled into a ponytail as tightly coiled as his body. Like a man who’d spent the entirety of his formative years skateboarding—flats of muscle across the chest and abs, ropey arms and legs.
“Big fan.” He’d held up his beer toward them in salute and then took a long pull. “My daughter, too.”
“How old is she?” Cecilia looked him up and down incredulously, apparently thinking the same thing Quinn was.
“Thirteen.” He smiled. “She’s probably not the youngest riot grrrl fan out there, but certainly the most ardent.”
“Did you want us to sign something for her?” Quinn asked, feeling a little embarrassed she’d misjudged him. “We have some stuff at the merch booth.”
“Did you bring her?” Cecilia took a sip of the vodka tonic the bartender had just made her. “Or is it just a company event for the guys?”
“Well, kind of.” He scratched his neck. “We’re all just big kids who got lucky with a company. To be honest, my daughter doesn’t do well in crowds. She’s a little sensitive. I wouldn’t call her special needs, but we’re mindful of her triggers.”
“We understand.” Quinn shot Cecilia a look. She touched the man’s forearm. “And we’d be happy to sign something.”
He smiled at her, whether excited by the offer or just relieved for her deflection of Cecilia’s hostility, she wasn’t sure.
“I have some merch,” he said. “Let me just get it from my bag. I’ll be right back, I mean, if you’re hanging around here for a bit.”
“Sure.” Quinn nodded, still smiling, even as she felt Cecilia’s grip on her arm tightening. As they watched him weave through the tent, Cecilia sank her drink and returned the glass to the bar.
“Let’s go, before he gets back,” she said to Quinn.
“No.” Quinn stood firm. Cecilia’s eyes grew large and rounded. “You know people know we’re lesbians, right? They know we’re sleeping together. Not everyone is trying to hit on me—or you.”
“I saw how he was looking at you.” Cecilia rolled her eyes.
It was increasingly like this. Quinn, as the leader singer of The Clit Girls—even though Cecilia had founded the band—got outsized attention. Just earlier that morning after the press junket, a freelancer writing an article for Paste hailed her down and asked for her feelings about playing Bonnaroo for the first time. In the publicity photos, Quinn was in the center. It was a tale as old as time, but it had created a rift, small but widening, between her and Cecilia.
“Besides,” Cecilia said, more conciliatory after a minute, “don’t you want to hang out with Annie and Dickey? Their set ended hours ago. They’ve been waiting for us forever.”
“It’ll just take a second,” Quinn said, throwing her empty bottle in the trash. “She’s one of our fans. Isn’t that why we do it? For all the young girls out there who need a voice?”
“If he even has a daughter.” Cecilia rolled her eyes again. “He’s probably at the merch table right now, buying shit.”
“You’re such an asshole.” Quinn pulled her arm away from Cecilia. She saw the rest of her future, more succinctly the rest of her evening, in the narrowing of Cecilia’s hazel eyes. She and Cecilia had broken up and gotten back together half a dozen times during the three months they’d been on the road, with Quinn agreeing to reconcile each time because it was the only way to get Cecilia on stage or out of the van, or to keep her from overdosing on her Zoloft.
“Yeah?” Cecilia turned. “Well, we’re done. And so are The Clit Girls.”
Jen Michalski is the author of four novels, three short story collections, and two novellas. Her last novel, You’ll Be Fine, was a 2021 Buzzfeed “Best Small Press Book,” a 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist, and was selected as one of the “Best Books We Read This Year” by the Independent Press Review. Her latest collection of fiction, The Company of Strangers, was a “Best of Baltimore” winner in 2023 and also a top indie press pick at Electric Literature. She’s the editor of the weekly online literary weekly jmww and currently lives in Southern California, although she will always be a Baltimore girl by heart.
For fans of Modern Lovers and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo comes a tender queer romance about one woman’s rediscovery of choice, hope, and wild love in the wake of her husband’s coma.
When Lacie Johnson’s husband, Derek, suffers a stroke at forty-seven and falls into a coma, her plans come to a screeching halt—asking Derek for a divorce, going back to
school to get her master’s, and starting over as a single woman now that their children have grown up. But what begins as a disaster brings an unexpected blessing in the form of Quinn, a kind stranger whom Lacie meets in the halls of the hospital. Lacie thinks she’s discovered in Quinn the life and the person she’s always wanted. But Quinn harbors a secret that connects her to Derek. And if Derek wakes up, Quinn must come clean and risk destroying her growing relationship with Lacie.
Told in alternating points of view, All This Can Be True follows Lacie and Quinn as they make the journey to each other—and then grapple with the fallout.
