This is a first novel for Marra, who is a Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner. The book tells the story of a young Chechen girl, Havaa, and her neighbor, Akhmed, who flee the carnage of warfare in Chechnya and make their way to a hospital to hide. There, Akhmed, meets a doctor, Sonja, with whom he shares a past. Nelson says the story expands even further. "It's really about these six people whose lives intersect through this hospital ... about how they're interconnected even though they think they're not," she says. "It's redemptive. It has hope."
