Intention: A Novel

From National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree and author of Such Good Work and Calling Ukraine (“The funniest tragedy I’ve ever read” —Garth Greenwell), a tense portrait of connection and coincidence

How many lives can collide over the course of a single spring day? In Intention, Lichtman’s quietly electrifying third novel, a chance encounter sets in motion a chain of reckonings that exposes the fault lines between art, ethics, and responsibility.

Birgitta is a celebrated mystery writer whose career was launched by a novel drawn from a real family’s tragedy—and whose account of that book’s publication has become part of her public legend. Noah is a journalist assigned to interview her about her efforts to support Ukrainians amid political crisis. When they meet, admiration and suspicion intermingle: Noah is dazzled by Birgitta’s elegance and success but questions both the ethics of her work and the story she tells about how her defining book came to be published; Birgitta, in turn, bristles at Noah’s judgments about her privilege and moral authority, while feeling diminished by family life. Their brief exchange reverberates throughout the day, unsettling assumptions each holds about goodness, guilt, and what it means to do the “right thing.”

Told in alternating perspectives, Intention traces the nearly invisible turns of fate that pull people toward—or away from—one another. With intelligence, restraint, and moral clarity, Lichtman examines the liberties writers take with real lives, and whether acts of generosity can ever fully redeem past harm. At once witty and grave, Intention is a novel of regret and accountability—a mature, searching work that captures how quickly, and irrevocably, everything can change.