1986
Part I · The Pink Palace
A wild hostel above the Ionian, a found family of seven, and a mysterious traveler named Hartai who asks a question none of them can shake.
A novel
The Question — a novel by R. Vincent Olmstead
R. Vincent Olmstead
If you could be twenty again, would you go back?
Have you read The Question?
Before publication
Be told the day the door opens.
Add your email and we will send Chapter 1.
Beta readers
“First, The Question transported me back to the 1980s and my own semester traveling abroad. Then, as the characters aged, I found myself relating to them in a completely different way. The question they ultimately face felt real and made me stop and think about my own answer. And the ending delivered. This is not one of those books that starts strong and fades at the finish. It stayed with me all the way through.”
“I went into The Question expecting a party book about men reliving their youth. I was wrong. This is a book women will connect with just as much, and I know my book club will love it. R. Vincent Olmstead creates memorable, layered characters whose lives and choices feel real long after the party is over.”
The story
Four golden days. Thirty years of life. One impossible choice.
A group of young travelers meet at the Pink Palace in Corfu in the summer of 1986 and form the kind of intense, accidental friendship that only seems possible at twenty. On their final night together a Romanian traveler named Hartai asks them a question. Decades later, the question returns — no longer theoretical.
1986–2016
Part II · The Years Between
Careers, reunions, marriages, children, divorces, success, failure, cakes, dreams—and a question that goes quiet but never goes away.
2016
Part III · The Choice
New Orleans, the reunion, the answers, and the door that finally opens. Five go back to twenty. Two stay.
Ask it of yourself
Loading…
Results appear once you answer
Excerpt
From Part I: The Pink Palace
Read the first chapter.
Add your email and we will send Chapter 1 of The Question.
Publication updates
Letters from the island, occasionally.
Notes about the book, the places in it, and word of when you can read it.