Hannah & Andre & Anna & Ryan

Twenty years ago, they were close friends. Then the betrayals started, and the books followed. A tale of literature and treachery.

- Chris Heath

THE BROAD EMPIRICAL facts are not disputed. Four friends: Hannah Pittard, Andrew Ewell, Anna Shearer, Ryan Fox. Two marriages. Years ago, they fell in together in and around the world of postgrad creative writing at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. There's a photograph from back when things were still good, all of them huddled together on a couch in a pose of easy camaraderie: four artists only beginning to discover the ways ambition might reshape their lives. They all stayed friends until, in the first week of July 2016, Andrew, who was married to Hannah, slept with Anna, who was married to Ryan. A couple of weeks later, Hannah found out. Soon, both marriages were over.

It's the kind of story-one of turmoil, epiphany, evolution, damage, hope, betrayal, rancor, joy that, as specific and tumultuous as it may be to each person living it, plays out thousands of times every day. And in its wake, each of those involved finds their own way to deal with it. Some suppress it all in silence. Some lean into forgiveness, some dive headlong into recrimination. Some endlessly replay, some yearn to forget.

But whichever choices are made, the blast radius is usually localized. Explosions like these are forever going off all around us, but you'd barely know.

Then there are writers.

SOMEWHERE IN THE void between “Write what you know” and “Do no harm” sits a whole world of possibility. In this, too, everyone involved must find their own way. I’m sitting outside a restaurant in the center of Charlottesville discussing such things with Andrew Ewell. Earlier this year, Ewell published a novel,