HARMLESS LIKE YOU is set across New York, Connecticut and Berlin, following Yuki Oyama, a Japanese girl fighting to make it as an artist, and Yuki’s son Jay, who, as an adult in the present day, is forced to confront his mother’s abandonment of him when he was only two years old. The novel opens when Yuki is 16 and her father is posted back to Japan. Though she and her family have been living as outsiders in New York City, Yuki opts to stay, intoxicated by her friendship with the beautiful aspiring model Odile, the energy of the city, and her desire to become an artist. But when she becomes involved with an older man and the relationship turns destructive, Yuki’s life is unmoored.