A stunning, provocative novel, Little Nothing is the story of Pavla, a child scorned for her physical deformity, hunted and tormented as a woman, whose passion and salvation lies in her otherworldly ability to transform herself and the world around her.
In her first novel since The God of War, critically acclaimed author Marisa Silver takes Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother photograph as inspiration for a breathtaking reinvention a story of two women, one famous and one forgotten, and of the remarkable legacy of their singular encounter. In 1936, a young mother resting by the side of a road in Central California is spontaneously photographed by a woman documenting the migrant laborers who have taken to America's farms in search of work little personal information is exchanged and neither has any way of knowing that their chance encounter has produced the most iconic image of the Great Depression. Three vibrant characters anchor the narrative of Mary Coin: Mary, the migrant mother herself, who emerges as a woman with deep reserves of courage and nerve, with private passions and carefully-guarded secrets. Vera Dare, the photographer wrestling with creative ambition who makes the choice to leave her children in order to pursue her work. And Walker Dodge, a present-day professor of cultural history, who discovers a family mystery embedded in the picture. In luminous, exquisitely observed prose, Silver creates an extraordinary tale from a brief moment in history, and reminds us that though a great photograph can capture the essence of a moment, it only scratches the surface of a life.
In a scruffy desert town in 1978, twelve-year-old Ares Ramirez lives in a trailer with his mother and younger brother. In this desolate, forgotten place, government fighter planes and helicopters make training runs by night using live ammunition. When an anonymous dead body floats in from the sea, Ares, on the cusp of his adolescence, is inspired to enact elaborate fantasies of mortal combat. But it is his troubled family that makes Ares a casualty of a different kind of war. His brother, Malcolm, is mentally handicapped, and his mother, distrusting authorities, chooses not to do anything about it, leaving the burden to Ares to protect his vulnerable brother from a world that sees him as "a retard." As he fights to define himself and to see a future for himself outside of the suffocating box of his home, Ares befriends a dangerous older kid, and what was once play becomes terrifyingly real as violence changes his life forever.
"A stunning second novel from Silver....Finely wrought characters and an illuminating portrait of the secret world of autism makes for a powerful, often tragic tale."-Kirkus Reviews
