Author(s): Valerie Laken

Children's Fiction

A gay couple’s journey to adopt a Russian baby begins to feel like a shopping trip, fraught with terrible choices that reveal the divide between them. The idyllic village life of a blind Russian boy and his mother is disrupted by a new American dentist and the wonders of racy Western magazines. A young American in Moscow resists the pressure to exploit her exotic adventures by writing about them, feeling the transaction that lurks behind ever such choice. A recent amputee keeps her husband at bay by removing herself from her body whenever he comes near. The title story depicts a family shaken by an industrial accident as its members divide themselves up room by room, only able to understand each other when they are separated. In one way or another, these are love stories, tales of the ways humans reach beyond their own borders, desperately trying to navigate the rough territory that stretches between one human kingdom and the next. Valerie Laken’s misplaced, misfit characters are damaged and scarred, and their bodies fail them; they are torn between the wonders of the world and the adventures of the mind. They travel and flee, struggling against their isolation to locate a place like home, ultimately reaching for the connection that will make them whole.