Excerpt from The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chapter 1: Theo

Saturday, April 13, 2024

The woman on the stage is haunted. I see it the moment she walks out, but no one else in the audience seems to have noticed—they're all still laughing and joking as if nothing's wrong. For a second, I forget that my career rests in this woman's hands. I'm rooted to the floor, mesmerized by how protectively she wears her aloofness, how obvious the vulnerability she's trying to mask.

I can understand why she wouldn't want to be here on this worn-out stage at the Hideout, playing a venue well past its prime in a California beach town too far north of Los Angeles to count as relevant. But this is also the only place she knows how to be—under a spotlight, her baby-blue Jazzmaster guitar strapped to her chest, living or dying by what the sound of her voice and the power of her words can do to a bunch of strangers.

It took effort to land in the same room as her. I'd had to cancel my meetings and fly cross-country into LAX, rent a car, and drive two hours north up the 101. But the truth is, it's nice to be out of the office and back in the scene. The stale beer sticking to my shoes and herbal scent of old weed remind me of the shows I used to crash as a teenager in my own shitty dive bar back in Virginia.

The crowd here skews young, and they're dressed like the band: baggy pants and hoodies, too warm and oversize for California. They have slender tattoos on their fingers and septum piercings and hair dyed pastel colors. West Coast hipsters: more sun bleached and skateboard friendly than the ones I'm familiar with. There are about fifty people total, which is less than you'd want for a band six years into their career on a major label. But the energy in the room—the low thrum of excitement—reminds me of my glory days, back when I was still only a fan, with a nose for bands that had yet to be discovered. Even though the crowd is small, they're passionate.

Yet none of the band members have made eye contact with the crowd since they walked onstage. There's Kenny Lovins on the drums, Tarak "Ripper" Ravishankar on bass, and the haunted Hannah Cortland, lead singer and guitar. Hannah holds a bottle of liquor by the neck—tequila, judging by the color—and sets it near her feet. When she finally takes stock of the audience, she looks through the crowd rather than at us.

I'm starting to wonder if every rumor I've heard about her is actually true.

I push past people to get a better look. For months the Future Saints have ignored my calls and emails, forcing me to come in person. Now that I finally have them in front of me, I'm eager to see if the reality matches the lore. I know their origin story, how the band met while freshmen at Cal State Long Beach. I've memorized the anecdotes about those early days they recycle in interviews: how they would skip class to write songs, smoke pot, and catch waves. They're mythmaking stories that tell me the Saints want the world to see them as West Coast chill, a handful of surfer kids who just happened to fall into music. Album art for their past four albums cements the breezy image: pastel colors, hazy lines, palm trees, blue skies.

And maybe they used to live up to their own myths. But not anymore. At this point in my career, I can diagnose most band problems with a quick glance: the musicians who are too drunk or high onstage, whose egos have grown toxic, who are in over their heads. And as soon as the Saints start playing, I see they're suffering from not one but all of those problems.

Kenny's long blond hair is held back by a playful floral headband, his T-shirt already starting to soak through with sweat, hands flying as he pounds the drums, a pure workman. Ripper's a tall, lean guy with a shaved head and finely wrought cheekbones, wearing painted-on jeans. In the middle of Hannah's guitar solo, he tugs off his rainbow LGBTQ-rights shirt and receives a wave of shouts.

Excerpted from The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead. Copyright © 2026 by Ashley Winstead. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.