The Ruins of Us: A Novel

One Woman’s Courage in the face of personal tragedy is at the heart of Heather A. Clark’s debut novel. Thirty–three–year–old Nicky Fowler thought her whole life was mapped out — a rewarding career as a third grade teacher, an adoring husband, and the perfect house in the suburbs — but complicated fertility issues lead to a devastating tragedy. Nicky’s marriage crumbles and she’s left unable to cope with her now–changed life.

When Nicky accepts a volunteer teaching position at an orphanage in Kenya, she finds that life there is unlike the world she’s known. Drought has brought famine, violence is everywhere, and the jaded orphanage director takes out her hatred on the parentless children.

Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson wants a home, food on the table, and a high school he can attend for more than part of a year. But as the son of a single father working in warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, Charley's been pretty much on his own. When tragic events leave him homeless weeks after their move to Portland, Oregon, Charley seeks refuge in the tack room of a run-down horse track. Charley's only comforts are his friendship with a failing racehorse named Lean on Pete and a photograph of his only known relative. In an increasingly desperate circumstance, Charley will head east, hoping to find his aunt who had once lived a thousand miles away in Wyoming-but the journey to find her will be a perilous one.

In Vlautin's third novel, Lean on Pete, he reveals the lives and choices of American youth like Charley Thompson who were failed by those meant to protect them and who were never allowed the chance to just be a kid.

They say you can never really go home again. Adult siblings Anna, Portia, and Emery are about to discover just how true that is.

He will change their lives forever. . . .

At fifteen, Natalie Ward believes her life is perfect. Growing up on a dairy farm in the mountains of British Columbia less than two miles from the American border, she knows little of the outside world. But she knows family. A family so close and loving that they are the envy of the nearby town of Atwood. Friends and neighbors, young and old alike, show up regularly on their farmhouse porch-all willing to share in the never-ending daily chores in exchange for a place at the Ward family table. Natalie cherishes her position as the only daughter of the beautiful Nettie Ward-the pride of the Catholic Ladies Auxiliary-and the town's milkman, Gus Ward-the darling of Atwood housewives. She adores her three brothers, especially the eldest, Boyer, whom she idolizes with a childlike worship. Like her mother, Natalie believes their lives are blessed, as rich and as sweet as the fresh milk that is their livelihood.

Everything changes one hot July afternoon in 1966 when a long-haired stranger walks up the winding dirt road to their door. The arrival of this soft-spoken American, a Vietnam War resister, will test the morals and beliefs of the Ward family and their close-knit community. The catastrophic events that are set in motion will leave relationships shattered and Natalie separated from the family she loves in ways that she could never have imagined.

Thirty-five years later, Natalie receives a late-night phone call from her now-estranged brother Boyer. Their mother is dying. Torn between the love of her mother and the fear of the past, Natalie returns to the town she has spent her entire adult life avoiding. As she travels back to her childhood home she steels herself against the bittersweet memories of that summer day in 1966 and the tragedy that followed. But before Natalie can find redemption, she must confront the secrets and horrors of a past she has desperately tried to forget.

Rebecca is young, lost, and beautiful. A gifted artist, she seeks solace and inspiration in the Mediterranean heat of Athens—trying to understand who she is and how she can love without fear.

George has come to Athens to learn ancient languages after growing up in New England boarding schools and Ivy League colleges. He has no close relationships with anyone and spends his days hunched over books or wandering the city in a drunken stupor.

Henry is in Athens to dig. An accomplished young archaeologist, he devotedly uncovers the city’s past as a way to escape his own, which holds a secret that not even his doting parents can talk about.

...And then, with a series of chance meetings, Rebecca, George, and Henry are suddenly in flight, their lives brighter and clearer than ever, as they fall headlong into a summer that will forever define them in the decades to come.

After her fathers death, twenty-six-year-old Gray Lachmann finds herself compulsively eating. Desperate to stop bingeing, she abandons her life in New York City for a job at a southern weight-loss camp. There, caught among the warring egos of her devious co-counselor, Sheena; the self-aggrandizing camp director, Lewis; his attractive assistant, Bennett; and a throng of combative teenage campers, she is confronted by a captivating mystery: her teenage half-sister, Eden, whom Gray never knew existed. Now, while unraveling her fathers lies, Gray must tackle her own self-deceptions and take control of her body and her life.

Visceral, poignant, and often wickedly funny, Skinny illuminates a young womans struggle to make sense of the link between hunger and emotion, and to make peace with her demons, her body, and herself.

In the tradition of Marisa de los Santos and Anne Tyler comes a moving debut about a young mother's year of heartbreak, loss, and forgiveness...and help that arrives from unexpected sources

Four months after her husband's death, Janie LaMarche remains undone by grief and anger. Her mourning is disrupted, however, by the unexpected arrival of a builder with a contract to add a porch onto her house. Stunned, Janie realizes the porch was meant to be a surprise from her husband—now his last gift to her.

As she reluctantly allows construction to begin, Janie clings to the familiar outposts of her sorrow—mothering her two small children with fierce protectiveness, avoiding friends and family, and stewing in a rage she can't release. Yet Janie's self-imposed isolation is breached by a cast of unlikely interventionists: her chattering, ipecac-toting aunt; her bossy, over-manicured neighbor; her muffin-bearing cousin; and even Tug, the contractor with a private grief all his own.

As the porch takes shape, Janie discovers that the unknowable terrain of the future is best navigated with the help of others—even those we least expect to call on, much less learn to love.

After a tragedy separates her from her mother, Juana García leaves her small town in Mexico to find her father, who left his home and family two years before to find work in America, el otro lado, and rise above the oppressive poverty so many of his countrymen endure.

Out of money and in need of someone to help her across the border, Juana meets Adelina Vasquez, a young woman who left her family in California to follow her lover to Mexico. Finding each other -- in a Tijuana jail -- in desperate circumstances, they offer each other much needed material and spiritual support and ultimately become linked forever in the most unexpected way.

The phenomenon of Mexican immigration to the United States is one of the most controversial issues of our time. While it is often discussed in terms of the political and economic implications, Grande, with this brilliant debut novel and her own profound insider's perspective, puts a human face on the subject. Who are the men, women, and children whose lives are affected by the forces that propel so many to risk life and limb, crossing the border in pursuit of a better life?

Take the journey Across a Hundred Mountains and see.