June Hayward introduces herself against the meteoric success of Athena Liu, a former Yale acquaintance now celebrated as a literary prodigy. After a night of celebrating Athena’s Netflix deal, June visits Athena’s lavish apartment and glimpses her newly finished World War I manuscript about the Chinese Labour Corps. Their late-night pancake contest turns fatal when Athena chokes. EMTs cannot resuscitate her. Shocked and unmoored, June leaves with Athena’s manuscript in her bag—an act she instantly rationalizes but that will define everything that follows.

Publicly, June performs grief—posting a viral thread and giving a funeral eulogy at Mrs. Patricia Liu’s invitation. Privately, she reads the draft, recognizes its brilliance and messiness, and begins “finishing” it. What starts as a purported caretaking exercise becomes wholesale revision: she trims, restructures, and completes the novel in Athena’s style. June sends the manuscript to her agent, Brett Adams, as her own. When her previous editor passes, the book goes to auction and sells to Eden Press. June, rechristened as “Juniper Song” to signal a worldly brand, surfs a major marketing push and convinces herself her labor makes the book hers.

With editor Daniella Woodhouse, June sharpens the novel for commercial readability—clarifying language, renaming characters, softening slurs, cutting a graphic suicide, and replacing a didactic ending with a lyrical close. To shore up her public backstory, she amplifies a narrative of closeness to Athena, launches a scholarship in Athena’s name with Peggy Chan’s organization, and, crucially, persuades Patricia to keep Athena’s drafting notebooks out of a Yale archive that could expose stylistic overlaps. A sensitivity-reader dispute with assistant Candice Lee ends with Candice being removed from the project after she pushes for Chinese diaspora review. The publicity machine hums; early buzz soars.

Launch night is triumphant—national reviews, a packed Politics and Prose event—until June thinks she sees Athena in the front row and unravels. Still, The Last Front hits the bestseller list and stays there. At BookCon, June moves among the industry’s elite, rebuffs her former editor Garrett McKintosh, and luxuriates in vindication. She mentors Emmy Cho to “pay it forward,” even as an innocent question—“Are you white?”—exposes the tension between June’s persona and identity.

Backlash soon erupts. Critics including Adele Sparks-Sato, YouTuber Kimberly Deng, and Substack writer Xiao Chen denounce the novel’s framing and a kiss scene that becomes a meme. June projects calm at a Cambridge event, defending the right to write beyond one’s identity, but an online discourse snowballs. A community talk in Rockville initially grants her grace—an elder thanks her for telling the CLC’s story—yet shame overwhelms her and she flees. Hollywood interest from producers Justin and Harvey centers on star packaging and market-friendly changes; June, unprepared, cedes creative vision for the promise of momentum.

Then an anonymous Twitter account, @AthenaLiusGhost, accuses June of stealing the manuscript and of yellowface via her pen name. Brett counsels silence; June doomscrolls, terrified. A children’s library visit passes quietly, but a Virginia festival panel implodes when artist Diana Qiu publicly accuses June of stealing from a dead woman, with the audience recording. Desperate, June sets a honeypot website and lures @AthenaLiusGhost into clicking; her brother-in-law Tom traces the IP to Fairfax, and June suspects Athena’s ex, Geoffrey Carlino.

June meets Geoffrey, secretly records his attempted blackmail, and exposes his lack of proof. She posts a careful denial; sympathy drifts her way, the anonymous account vanishes, and Greenhouse sends a film option. Publicly exonerated, June now faces a different problem: the “ghost” of Athena in her head derails new work. She confesses she also took brainstorming pages from Athena. Using those scraps, June writes the novella Mother Witch, and recounts a college memory in which Athena mined June’s own trauma for a story—fuel for her ongoing self-justification. Mother Witch earns strong notices and seems to quiet doubts.

Adele then publishes evidence that Mother Witch’s opening lines came from an Athena workshop piece, complete with dated screenshots and corroboration. June’s industry circle evaporates. On a Zoom with Eden, legal advises revising the opening and laying low; Daniella and the team choose containment over confrontation. Patricia Liu refuses Adele access to Athena’s notebooks but coolly notes Athena would never have written something like Mother Witch. Paradoxically, right-wing attention boosts June’s sales even as her reputation craters. A clumsy research trip to Chinatown ends with June being recognized and ejected. She refuses a cynical dystopian IP pitch about China’s one-child policy.

At a Young AAPI Writers’ Workshop funded by the scholarship in Athena’s name, June briefly reconnects with teaching joy, then discovers students reading Adele’s blog. Vindictively, she humiliates Skylar Zhao in workshop and resigns under a false “family emergency” after complaints. Retreating to her mother’s home, June sifts old notebooks and argues with her practical, protective mom about quitting versus legacy; she admits needing to be read and fears her voice without Athena’s scaffolding.

Back in DC, a thoughtful anonymous Goodreads review about mixed authorship inspires June to draft a confessional novel that blurs truth and fiction. She posts about her productivity—then Athena’s dormant Instagram springs to life with taunting posts visible only to June. She suspects Geoffrey; he denies involvement and points out the images are photoshopped, while implicitly signaling he understands what she did. The posts escalate into horror vignettes. June spirals into Chinese ghost lore and rituals, mistakes Diana Qiu for Athena on the street, and finally messages the account. The “ghost” summons her to the Georgetown Exorcist steps.

At the steps, a disembodied voice in Athena’s media-poised cadence draws out June’s confession of envy and theft. The voice glitches; Candice Lee steps from the shadows. Candice admits she used a publicist’s login to commandeer Athena’s Instagram, faked the images, planted cameras, and recorded June’s confession—motivated by being blacklisted and punished after advocating for a sensitivity read and leaving a one-star ARC review. She intends to publish an exposé. Panicking, June attacks to seize the footage; they grapple by the stairs; Candice kicks free, and June pitches backward into empty air.

June awakens in the hospital with a broken clavicle and ankle. Records list an ice slip and an anonymous 911 call; there is no legal inquiry. Candice releases a New York Times interview with audio, inflates her role on the book, and sells a lavish memoir, with Daniella publicly signaling Eden’s interest. Weeks blur in medicated isolation as June contemplates suicide yet aches to answer. When Candice’s seven-figure deal is announced, June resolves to reclaim the narrative with her own counter-memoir—framing herself as the victim of a hoax and cancellation, betting that a forceful retelling can still win the story back.