Once Upon a Lie

Summary

Mia Strauss is trying to be a good mother. She’s worked hard to build a stable life since losing her memory at eighteen when an assailant pushed her from the third-story landing of her parents’ gold coast mansion. But lately, Mia is losing control and feels she’s being watched wherever she goes. She is taking more and more of her prescription drugs to quiet the rising panic and anxiety. But when her husband, Alexander, comes home to find her face down on their living room floor, she’s at risk of losing her girls.

Alexander Strauss, neuropsychologist and professor at Columbia University, can no longer trust his wife. Her behavior and moods have grown evermore erratic. She takes plenty of medication but doesn’t make any progress. She has become a danger to herself, and their children. It is believed that Mia will never be able to remember, but Alexander has other ideas. Based on her recent brain images, Alexander is confident Mia’s continued amnesia is psychological. She doesn’t want to remember. He gives her an ultimatum, either she gets real help, or he’ll leave her and take the girls.

Desperate to save her marriage and keep her family, Mia signs up for a therapy she’s never tried—an experimental treatment that hypothesizes psilocybin may help traumatized patients process and recover their forgotten lives. But as Mia makes progress and her history begins to take shape, it becomes apparent that those closest to Mia never want her to remember what happened that night.

And they’ll do whatever it takes to stop the truth from being uncovered.