**2024 American Fiction Awards Winner: Travelogue**
**2024 American Fiction Awards Finalist: Multicultural Fiction**

Liss Larkin and Nao Kao Inthavong hail from opposite corners of the world when they meet in graduate school; she an exuberant daughter of the American Midwest, and he the reserved survivor of Southeast Asia's wars. Yet their connection is immediate and their bond gradually deepens - right up until the moment Liss walks away without a word of explanation.

Twenty years later, Liss and Nao Kao unexpectedly cross paths again and emotions that seemed lost to time resurface as the pair reckons with the decisions they made years ago. Ultimately, Liss finds herself traveling to Laos, bound toward the one person she had sworn to forget, not sure what, or who, she will find when she lands.

I Never Said I Love You is an examination of travel, friendship, forgiveness, and the roads not taken that follows one woman's journey through her past and across the world. From the ancient temples of Luang Prabang to a remote corner of Senegal and through the heartland of America, Liss traces the contours of a relationship that spans decades and continents as she comes to terms with what it means to either shape life or be shaped by it.