The Door Swings Open

By Kristin Bartley Lenz

One will escape. One will get caught. One will die. Sixteen-year-old Charlotte checks into Turning Leaf, a Detroit shelter for runaway teens, telling everyone she is fleeing a home unraveling around her war-haunted father. Her real reason is sharper: her former best friend Ella vanished from this same shelter, and Charlotte means to find out why. Retracing Ella's last days through a city of abandoned houses and thin places, she uncovers a hidden world of grooming, predators, and disappearing girls that the adults around her refuse to see, alongside a magnetic runaway boy who knows more than he admits. Told through a chorus of human and inanimate narrators, from the teens themselves to the rooms and objects that watch them, The Door Swings Open braids literary suspense with grief, intuition, and tarot into a mystery about who gets looked for and who gets left behind. Written by a licensed clinical social worker, it approaches sexual exploitation with restraint and hope, giving readers a gripping, emotionally intelligent story and a clear-eyed view of the dangers facing vulnerable teens.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1966883196
• ISBN13: 9781966883197
• Release Date: March 2027
• Publisher: Left Field Publishing
• Length: 385 Pages
• Dimensions: 5.5" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 to Postsecondary