When Cameron was fifteen, Sonia was her best friend — no one could come between them. Now Cameron is a twenty-nine-year-old research assistant with no meaningful ties to anyone except her aging boss, noted historian Oliver Doucet. When an unexpected letter arrives from Sonia ten years after the incident that ended their friendship, Cameron doesn't reply, despite Oliver's urging. But then he passes away, and Cameron discovers that he has left her with one final task: to track down Sonia and hand-deliver a mysterious package to her. Now without a job, a home, and a purpose, Cameron decides to honor his request, setting off on the road to find this stranger who was once her inseparable other half.

The Myth of You and Me, the story of Cameron and Sonia's friendship — as intense as any love affair — and its dramatic demise, captures the universal sense of loss and nostalgia that often lingers after the end of an important relationship. Searingly honest, beautiful, and full of fragile urgency, The Myth of You and Me is a celebration and portrait of a friendship that will appeal to anyone who still feels the absence of that first true friend.

"Stewart peers into the complicated heart of friendship in a moving second novel (after 2000's Body of a Girl). Ever since a cataclysmic falling out with her best friend, Sonia, after college, Cameron's closest companion has been Oliver, the 92-year-old historian she lives with and cares for in Oxford, Miss. Oliver's death leaves Cameron alone and adrift, until she discovers that he has given her one last task: she must track down her estranged best friend (whose letter announcing her engagement Cameron had so recently ignored) and deliver a mysterious present to her. Cameron's journey leads her back to the people, places and memories of their shared past, when they called themselves 'Cameronia' and swore to be friends forever. It was a relationship more powerful than romantic love — yet romantic love (or sex, anyway) could still wreck it. Stewart lures the reader forward with two unanswered questions: What was the disaster that ended their friendship, and what will be revealed when Cameron and Sonia are together again and Oliver's package is finally opened? The book is heartfelt and its characters believable jigsaw puzzles of insecurities, talents and secrets, and if Cameron's carefully guarded anger makes her occasionally disagreeable, readers will nevertheless welcome her happy ending. Agent, Gail Hochman. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Stewart's writing is sharp and observant, making this tale of the complexities of friendship affecting and genuine." Booklist

"Deftly exposes the passionate and particular bonds of female friendship, from adolescence to adulthood. Poignant, fierce, and compelling, this is a story all women will recognize, and one all too rarely told." Claire Messud, author of The Hunters and The Last Life In

"Stewart captures, as few other writers do, the passions and pains and pleasures of friendship....[A] beautifully written and suspenseful novel." Margot Livesey, author of Banishing Verona

After a ten-year absence from each other's lives, childhood friends reconnect with their once inseparable other halves. The tale will appeal to anyone who has ever loved and lost a best friend.

Leah Stewart is the author of Body of a Girl. She has taught at Vanderbilt University and Sewanee, the University of the South. She lives outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband, writer Matt O’Keefe, and their daughter. Visit her at leahstewart.com.