The Given World

Download or read book The Given World written by Marian Palaia and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1968, when Riley is thirteen, her brother Mick goes missing in Vietnam. Her family shattered, Riley finds refuge in isolation and drugs until she falls in love with a boy from the reservation, but he, too, is on his way to the war. Riley takes off as well, in search of Mick, or of a way to be in the world without him. She travels from Montana to San Francisco and from there to Vietnam. Among the scarred angels she meets along the way are Primo, a half-blind vet with a secret he cant keep; Lu, a cab-driving addict with an artists eye; Phuong, a Saigon barmaid, Rileys conscience and confidante; and Grace, a banjo-playing girl on a train, carrying her grandmothers ashes in a tin box. All are part of a lost generation, coming of age too quickly as they struggle to reassemble lives disordered by pain and loss. At center stage is Riley, a masterpiece of vulnerability and tenacity, wondering if shell ever have the courage to return to her parents farm, to its ghosts and memoriesresident in a place she has surrendered, surely, the right to call home.