All-Night Pharmacy: A Novel
SynopsisPlot
On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions—nothing unusual for two sisters bound in an incredibly toxic relationship. Our unnamed narrator has always been under the spell of the alluring and rebellious Debbie and, despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears. Falling deeper into the life she cultivated with her sister, our narrator gets a job as an emergency room secretary where she steals pills to sell on the side. Cue Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who arrives at the hospital claiming to be a psychic tasked with acting as the narrator’s spiritual guide. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism, and ambiguous power dynamics.
Story
About this book
An unnamed young woman graduates from high school and follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a Los Angeles bar filled with energy healers, aspiring actors, and assorted outcasts. They share a bag of unidentified pills, and the night dissolves into reckless encounters. This is familiar territory for the sisters, whose bond runs on impulse and dependency. Then Debbie disappears, and the narrator must reckon with a life built around someone who is no longer there.
Rather than pulling away from the chaos, the narrator moves further into it. She takes a job as an emergency room secretary and begins stealing medication to sell. Into this unstable situation arrives Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who appears at the hospital calling herself a psychic sent to act as the narrator's spiritual guide. Their connection shifts between friendship, attraction, mysticism, and an uneasy exchange of power.
Ruth Madievsky sets the novel in a Los Angeles defined by late nights, pharmaceutical haze, and characters living at the edges of conventional life. The story follows its narrator through questions of identity, autonomy, and what remains once a defining relationship is suddenly absent.
