Book

Release Date: May 5, 2026
256 pages, size 6 x 9”
$18.99 retail
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-57869-222-4
Library of Congress Control Number: LCCN (2026904254)

LITERARY FICTION / NEW ENGLAND / FRIENDSHIP

Crystal Springs

While friendships grow and change over time, secrets can't keep true friends apart

Steven Bennett is a historian, chef, and programmer in the quaint rural towns of the Pioneer Valley. Rejected by his first love, he marries another woman and lives an ordinary life hosting barbecues and tip-toeing around a past extramarital affair. When Suzi Carpenter, the young woman who may or may not be his daughter, dies of a suspected overdose, Steven’s whole life, and the town, is upended. Set upon the backdrop of lush hills in Western Massachusetts, Steven embarks on a quest to discover what, or perhaps who, killed Suzi, only to unearth buried scars and hard truths about old friends.

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review

“Set in a lush and vividly rendered landscape, Crystal Springs is a poignant exploration of belonging and betrayal, of the secrets we keep and the families we choose. As loyalties fray and truths unspool, love—sometimes unspoken, sometimes unrequited—surfaces in unexpected ways. With unsparing prose and quiet emotional force, Lesser’s debut lays bare the tangled bonds of friendship and the echoes of loss and longing that shape us.”

“Lesser’s probing debut is warm and alive…[an] incisive novel of aging, compromise, and Pioneer Valley life.”

In Don Lesser’s debut novel, he has created Steven Bennett, the everyman character who finds a world of poets and artists as he searches for his own perch in a forty-year journey. If Steven thinks he can subdue the power of the past, he has underestimated the long game that the past plays, especially for those he loves. Peril simmers beneath the surface in Crystal Springs.”

“Lesser does a masterful job of exploring our choices in life and where they take us. Set in a small college town in New England in the late 70s, Lesser takes us on a decades-long journey through the eyes and experiences of a small group of friends as they navigate their place in the world. From artists to academics, these creative, yet deeply flawed characters wind their way through each other’s lives. Not everyone lives happily ever after, and through his characters, Lesser gives us an in-depth view of what makes us who we are.”

“Soaring across forty years in its characters’ lives, Crystal Springs manages to portray the magic of youthful friendship—and its descent into cynicism and pain. Powerful prose, wry and unflinching. No one spared, least of all the reader.”