The Brightness: A Novel

by Chad Harbach

At 27, Pella’s life looks settled: she’s a recent college graduate, engaged to Mike, her longtime boyfriend, and helping her friend Owen pull off his own destination wedding on Block Island. But over that wild wedding weekend, Pella’s past and present collide spectacularly, blowing up her plans and sending her spiralling toward an unplanned future in New York City.

There, in a city that’s equal parts glittering opportunity and cutthroat grit, Pella is forced to see herself in constantly changing lights as she wrestles with who she is and what she will become. As she cycles through possibilities and identities – is she an artist? A bartender? A scholar, a lover, a wife? – Pella navigates the heights and depths of passion and ambition, and the incalculable wages of love and loss.

In stunning scenes and spectacular characters, Chad Harbach captures that specific, shimmering anxiety of your twenties when life still feels wide open, even as hard and irreversible choices start closing in. Energetic, funny and deeply human, this much-anticipated follow-up to The Art of Fielding confirms Chad Harbach as one of the most accomplished and perceptive writers of our time.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication October 27, 2026

About the author

Chad Harbach grew up in Wisconsin and was educated at Harvard and the University of Virginia. He is a cofounder and coeditor of n+1.

Visit:

Facebook.com/nplusone

Facebook.com/TheArtofFielding

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved 'The Art of Fielding' and have read it several times. With this book, I was glad to see the stories of Mike, Pella and Owen continue. I was amused at some of the twists in Owen's story.

But this story meandered along, its emotional power sapped, its main stories kind of hidden in its depths. I lost momentum. It offers a great deal to the right reader. Maybe I just liked baseball more as a central part of a story.

My thanks to All My Friends Books of Cortland, NY for the advance copy.