Right Beside You

by Tucker Shaw

Genres: YA Wizards & Witches; YA Historical Fiction; YA Coming of Age; YA LGBT & Pride; YA Romance

Synopsis

"Deeply moving and thoroughly engrossing." —Kirkus, starred review

In this fresh, speculative blend of queer romance and coming-of-age, Eddie meets Theo in present-day New York and Francis in a New York of the past... torn between eras and his heart, he must make a decision that will change his life forever.

High school has just ended and Eddie is at a loss for what's next. He had a falling out with his best friend, and he never really related to the rest of his peers in the sleepy Colorado town he calls home. The future is bleak.

Until his ancient and eccentric great aunt Cookie asks him to care for her in New York City as she recuperates from an illness. Eddie leaps at the opportunity. Soon after he arrives at her tiny Greenwich Village apartment, homebound Cookie asks Eddie to use her vintage polaroid camera to snap pictures of her favorite places she can no longer visit. But something's unusual about this camera. When he takes a photo, he's launched back in time to an entirely different New York of the early 20th century.

As Eddie explores the underground queer life of the 1930s, he discovers new undercurrents of his own identity. Not to mention a dangerously handsome boy in scuffed boots and tattered stovepipe trousers who keeps popping up in his visions of the past.

But when Eddie begins to develop a crush on the mercurial Francis, a cute baker named Theo enters the picture—and he's in the present. Caught between timelines and feelings, Eddie must make a decision about what he's willing to chase: his romantic fantasies of the past or a reality that might just be what he's wanted all along.

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Release date: April 29, 2025

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Print pages: 384

Sample

ONE

Have you ever been sitting around, minding your business, maybe finishing lunch or tying your shoe, when something happens— a knock on a door, a ringing telephone—that changes your life forever?

That’s what’s about to happen to Eddie this very second. Do you see him? Eddie? He’s right there, crouched down on the kitchen floor trying to unknot his sneaker, the left one, the one with the fraying lace that he’s tied too tightly. He’s muttering something under his breath. Something about how much he hates these old shoes. Or maybe something about how much he hates his useless job, how much he hates this useless town. Or how much he hates his best friend for the way she’s betrayed him …

… and there it is. The telephone.

It’s a sharp, piercing noise and Donna shrieks. She stares blankly at Eddie and he stares back, like two stunned deer on the roadside, because this kitchen phone never rings. The only reason they even still have it is so Donna can make extra money on the weekends selling newspaper subscriptions for the Mesa Springs Gazette, and the Gazette says she has to use a landline for some unspecified reason. At least they pay for it.

This bears explaining: Donna is Eddie’s mother. But he doesn’t call her mom or mother or ma. He calls her Donna. He just started doing it one day and it stuck. And it works. Now that he’s graduated high school they live more like roommates than mother and son anyway. Like peers. She goes to work in the morning, he goes to work in the morning, and then they come home and eat supper together. Unless she has a date or something.

Another ring. “Should I answer that?” Donna asks.

Eddie tugs at the neck of his gray sweatshirt, a size too small with a grease-splatter stain on the cuff. “I wouldn’t,” he says. “It’s probably just someone selling newspaper subscriptions.”

“A comedian,” Donna says, reaching for the handset.

Eddie looks back at the knot in his shoelace, which he’s somehow made tighter. If only he was limber enough to use his teeth.

Donna presses Speaker. “Hello?”

“Oh! You’re alive,” a voice says. “Where the hell have you been?”

The voice—curt, acerbic, and hassled—belongs to someone named Albert in New York City. He has news about Eddie’s great-great-aunt Cookie. Apparently, she’s been in the hospital with some sort of infection.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for two days,” Albert says. “Don’t you have answering machines out there?”

Donna ignores his question. “Is Cookie all right?”

“Two whole days,” Albert says. “Anything could have happened in that time. And you, her only relative, two thousand miles away and unreachable. Do you even care about her?”

“Is she all right?” Donna asks again, and Eddie can hear honest worry in her voice.

Albert sputters and sighs. “Yes. It’s minor. But they’re sending her home on Saturday and she asked for Andy to come and stay with her while she recuperates.”

“Andy? Who’s Andy?”

“Your son? Andy?” Albert scoffs. “Surely you’ve heard of him.”

Eddie looks up from his shoe, brow furrowed in confusion, but Donna doesn’t look back. Her eyes are fixed on a spot of chipped beige paint on the ceiling.

“I don’t have a son named Andy,” she says. “His name is Eddie.”

“Fine,” Albert says. “Eddie, then. He needs to come to New York.”

“I don’t understand,” Donna says.

“What don’t you understand? Your aunt is ninety-nine years old and she needs help.”

“Great-aunt,” Donna is saying, correcting Albert. Her sharp tone pierces Eddie’s daydream. He shakes his eyes open to find he’s still in the kitchen, still in the world of frayed laces and treacherous ex–best friends. “She’s my great-aunt.”

“Look, Donna,” Albert says. “That’s your name, right? Donna?”

Donna doesn’t respond. She’s still staring at the chipped paint.

Albert continues. “I don’t care if she’s your great-grand-aunt thrice removed. Someone needs to stay with her and it can’t be me. No way. I already come up to her apartment every day to keep the place clean and set her hair. I can’t do any more than that. I happen to have my own life, you know. Not to mention sciatica, and high blood pressure, and—”

“I can’t stay with her, either, Albert. I have work.”

“She didn’t ask for you. She asked for Andy.”

“Eddie.”


Copyright © 2025 by Tucker Shaw