The Story

What if the person who shaped your life was the one you could never quite leave behind?

Growing up in the suburbs of the 1970s, Chase Marino falls deeply in love with Claire Davenport—a first love that will influence the choices he makes for decades.

Years later, while building a career in television, Chase is drawn into a dangerous Cold War drama in Manhattan involving Russian Olympic silver medalist Sophia Ivanova and her attempt to defect to the United States. When the attempt fails, Chase heads west to Los Angeles, where opportunity, ambition, and the seductive world of network television begin pulling him toward a very different life.

As his career rises, Chase must confront the compromises he has made, the relationships he has left behind, and a question that has followed him across the years: Can you ever truly move on from the person who first taught you what love meant?

Set against the changing cultural landscape of 1970s suburbia, Cold War America, and 1980s Hollywood, Is It You? is a sweeping story of first love, ambition, identity, and the choices that quietly determine the course of a life.

Book Details

• Publication date: October 5, 2026
• Publisher: Firstlight Imaging Press
• Genre: Historical & Literary Fiction