Land of Enchantment

When Leigh Stein received a call from an unknown number in July 2011, she let it go to voice mail, assuming it would be her ex-boyfriend, Jason. Instead the call was from his brother: Jason had been killed in a motorcycle accident. He was 23 years old. She had seen him alive just a few weeks earlier.

Leigh first met Jason at an audition for a tragic play. He was 19 and troubled and intensely magnetic, a dead ringer for James Dean. Leigh was 22 and living at home with her parents, trying to figure out what to do with her young-adult life. Within months they had fallen in love and moved to New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, a place neither of them had ever been. But what was supposed to be a romantic adventure quickly turned sinister, as Jason’s behavior went from playful and spontaneous to controlling and erratic, eventually escalating to violence.

Land of Enchantment lyrically explores the heartbreaking complexity of why the person hurting you the most can be impossible to leave. With searing honesty and cutting humor, Leigh wrestles with what made her fall in love with someone so destructive and how to grieve a man who wasn’t always good to her.