A History of Wild Places: A Novel

By Shea Ernshaw

In this “riveting, atmospheric thriller that messes with your mind in the best way” (Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author), three residents of a secluded, seemingly peaceful commune investigate the disappearances of two outsiders.

Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Often hired by families as a last resort, he takes on the case of Maggie St. James—a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books—and is soon led to a place many believed to be only a legend.

Called Pastoral, this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it…he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James.

Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease—rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms.

“As spine-chilling as it is beautifully crafted” (Ruth Emmie Lang, author of Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance), A History of Wild Places is a story about fairy tales, our fear of the dark, and losing yourself within the wilderness of your mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982164829

Shea Ernshaw

Shea Ernshaw is the author of A History of Wild Places, the New York Times bestseller The Wicked Deep, Winterwood, and A Wilderness of Stars. She is the winner of the 2019 Oregon Book Award. She lives in a small mountain town in Oregon and is happiest when lost in a good book, lost in the woods, or writing her next novel.

Book preview

PART ONE

THE BARN

Death has a way of leaving breadcrumbs, little particles of the past that catch and settle and stain. A single strand of copper-brown hair, the follicle ripped from a skull, snagged by a door hinge or cold, clenched fingers. Drops of blood and broken skin, carelessly left at the bottom of a bathroom sink when they should have been scrubbed away.

Objects leave hints too: a bracelet broken at the clasp, dropped in the red-clay dirt; a shoe kicked off during a struggle, wedged behind a rear truck tire; a contact lens, popped free when the person screamed for help in some deep, dark part of a backwoods lot where no one could hear.

These things, these artifacts, tell me where a person has been. The last steps they took.

But not in the way you might think.

The past sputters through me, images reflected against my corneas, revealing the strained, awful looks carved into the faces of those who’ve gone missing. Who’ve vanished and never returned home.

I see them in a sort of slideshow staccato, like the old black-and-white nickel films. It’s a terrible talent to hold an object and see the likeness of the person it once belonged to, their final moments shivering and jerking through me as if I were right there. Witnessing the grim, monstrous ends of a person’s life.

But such things—such abilities—can’t be given back.

Snow blows against the truck windshield, icing it over, creating a thin filigree effect—like delicate lacework. The heater stopped working three days back, and my hands shake in my coat pockets as I peer through the glass at the Timber Creek Gas & Grocery, a tiny, neon-lit storefront at the edge of a mountain town without a name. Through the gusting snow, I can just make out a collection of homes sunk back in the lodgepole pines, and several businesses long since boarded up. Only the small firehouse, a tow truck service, and the gas station are still up and running. A stack of cut firewood sits outside the gas station with a sign that reads: $5 A BUNDLE, SELF-SERVE. And in smaller print: BEST PRICE ON MOUNTAIN.

This town is merely a husk, easily wiped off the map with a good wind or an unstoppable wildfire.

I push open the truck door, rusted hinges moaning in the cold, and step out into the starless night. My boots leave deep prints in the fresh two inches of snowfall, and I cross the parking lot to the front doors of the gas station, sharp winter air numbing my ears and nostrils, my breath a frosty cloud of white.

But when I pull open the gas station door, a tidal wave of warm, stagnant air folds over me—thick with the scent of motor oil and burnt corn dogs—and for a moment I feel light-headed. My eyes flick across the store: the shelves have a vacant, apocalyptic feel. Dust molders on every surface, while a few solitary items—starchy white bread, Pop-Tarts, and tiny boxes of travel-size cereal—seem almost like movie-set props from another era, their logos sun-bleached and outdated. At the back wall of the store sits a droning cooler lined with beer, cartons of milk, and energy drinks.

This place isn’t haunted—not in the way I’m accustomed to—it’s paralyzed in time.

At the front counter, a woman with feathered gray hair and even grayer skin sits perched on a stool under the headache-inducing florescent lights. She’s tapping her fingers against the wood countertop as if she’s tapping a pack of cigarettes, and I move across the store toward her.

To the left of the cash register sits a coffee maker coated in a heavy layer of dust—I’m tempted to reach for one of the stacked paper cups and fill it with whatever stagnant, lukewarm liquid is waiting inside, but I suspect it will taste just as it looks: like oily truck tires. So I let my gaze fall back to the woman, my hands clenching inside my coat pockets, feeling the burn of blood flowing back into my fingertips.

The woman eyes me with a nervy-impatience, and a hint of suspicion. I know this look: She doesn’t like me at the onset. The beard I’ve been cultivating for the last month doesn’t rest well on the features of my face, it makes me look ten years older, mangy like a stray dog. Even after a shower I still look wild, undomesticated, like someone you shouldn’t trust.

I smile at the woman, trying to seem acquiescent, harmless, as though a glimpse of my teeth will somehow reassure her. It does not. Her sour expression tugs even tighter.

Evening, I begin, but my voice has a roughness to it, a grating unease—the lack of sleep giving me away. The woman says nothing, only keeps her paled eyes squarely on me, like she’s waiting for me to demand all the money in the register. Have you heard of a woman named Maggie St. James? I ask. I used to have a knack for this: for convincing people to trust me, to give up details they’ve never even told the police, to reveal that small memory they’ve been holding on to until now. But that talent is long gone, sunk like flood waters into a damp basement.

The woman makes a half-interested snort, the scent of cigarette smoke puffing out from her pores—a salty, ashen smell that reminds me of a case I took out in Ohio three years back, searching for a missing kid who had been holed up inside an abandoned two-story house out behind a run-down RV park, where the walls had the same stench—salt and smoke—like it had been scrubbed into the daffodil and fern wallpaper.

Everyone around here’s heard of Maggie St. James, the woman answers with a gruff snort, wrinkling her stubby nose and looking up at me from the nicotine-yellow whites of her eyes. You from a newspaper?

I shake my head.

A cop?

I shake my head again.

But she doesn’t seem to care. Either way, cop or reporter, she keeps talking. A woman goes missing and this place turns into a damn spectacle, like a made-for-TV movie—helicopters and search dogs were swarming up in those woods, found a whole heap of nothing. Searched through folks’ garbage cans and garages, asking questions like the whole community was in on something, like we knew what happened to that missing woman but weren’t saying. She crosses her arms—all bony angles and loose, puckered skin, like a snake slowly shedding her useless outer layer from her skeleton. We’re honest people ’round here, tell ya what we think even if you don’t ask. Those police made people paranoid, creeping around at night with their flashlights, peeking into decent folks’ windows. Most of us didn’t leave our homes for weeks; cops had us believing there was a murderer out there, snatching people up. But it was all for nothing. They never turned up a damn thing. And all for some woman who we didn’t even know. At this she nods her head, lips pursed together, as if to punctuate the point.

The locals in this town might not have known who Maggie St. James was when she turned up in their community then promptly vanished, but a lot of people outside of here did. Maggie St. James had gained notoriety some ten years ago when she wrote a children’s book titled Eloise and the Foxtail: Foxes and Museums. What followed were four more books, and some fierce public backlash that her stories were too dark, too grisly and sinister, and that they were inspiring kids to run away from home and venture into nearby woodlands and forests, searching for something called the underground—a fictional location she wrote about in the series. The underground was supposed to turn ordinary kids into something unnatural—a dark, villainous creature. One quote in particular from a noted literary journal said, St. James’s take on the modern fairy tale is more nightmares than dreams, stories to make your children fear not just the dark, but the daylight, too. I wouldn’t read this to a serial killer, let alone to my child.

Shortly after her fifth book was published, a fourteen-year-old boy named Markus Sorenson ventured deep into the Alaskan wilderness in search of this underground and died from hypothermia. His body was found seven days later. I remember the case because I got a call from a detective up in Anchorage, asking if I might come up and see if I could assist in finding the boy. But they found him at the entrance to a small rocky cave the following day, skin whiter than the surrounding snowfall. I wondered if in those final moments, when the delirium of cold began to make him hallucinate, did he think he had found the underground?

After the boy’s death, Maggie St. James just sort of slipped into obscurity—with good reason. According to Wikipedia, there was a planned sixth book in the Eloise and the Foxtail series. A book that would never be written, because the author, Maggie St. James, vanished.

Do you remember her stopping here? I ask the woman, whose pale blue veins are tightening beneath the waxy skin of her throat.

She raises an eyebrow at me, as if I’ve offended her in suggesting that she might not remember such a thing after five years. I know Maggie St. James stopped at the Timber Creek Gas & Grocery because it was in the police report, as well as a statement from a cashier who was not named. She was unmemorable at best, the woman answers, what’s left of her thinning eyelashes fluttering closed then open again, dark mascara clotting at the corners. But lucky for the police, and you, I remember everyone. She glances to the oily storefront windows—snow spiraling against the glass—as if the memory were still there, just within reach. She got gas and bought a pack of strawberry bubble gum, tore open the package and started chewing it right there, before she’d even paid for it. Then she asked about a red barn. Asked if I knew where she could find one around here. Of course, I told her about the old Kettering place a few miles on up the road. Said it was nearly collapsed, a place kids go to drink, and hadn’t been properly used in twenty years. I asked her what she wanted with that old place, but she wouldn’t say. She left without even a thanks, then drove off. They found her car the next morning, abandoned. She snuffs, turning her face back to the windows, and I get the sense she wants to make some comment about how rude city folk can be, but catches herself just in case I might be city folk. Even though I’m not. And from what I knew of Maggie St. James, she wasn’t either.

I clear my throat, hoping there might be more beneath the surface of her memory if I can ask the right question and pry it loose. Have you heard anyone talk about her in the years since? I ask, tiptoeing around the thing I really want to ask. Someone who saw her, who remembers something?

Someone who remembers killing her, you mean? She unfolds her arms, mouth tugging strangely to one side.

I doubt there’s a serial killer in the area—there’d be reports of other disappearances—but perhaps there’s someone who keeps to themselves, lives alone up in these woods, someone who maybe hadn’t killed before, but only because he had never encountered the right opportunity—until Maggie drove into town. Someone out hunting deer or rabbit, and a stray shot tore through a woman with short, cropped blond hair—a woman whose body now needed to be disposed of, burned or buried. Accidents can turn people into grave diggers.

I can’t say for sure that some folks around here don’t have a bolt untightened from the mind, a few cobwebs strung between the earlobes, but they aren’t killers. The woman shakes her head. And they certainly can’t keep their mouths shut. If someone killed that girl, they’d’ve talked about it by now. And soon enough, the whole town would know of it. We’re not much for keeping secrets for long.

I look away from her, eyeing the coffee machine again, the stack of paper cups. Should I risk it? But the woman speaks again, one eyebrow raised like a pointed toothpick, as if she’s about to let me in on a secret. Maybe she wanted to get herself lost, start a new life; no crime in that. Her eyes flick to the pack of cigarettes sitting beside the cash register, a purple lighter resting on top. She needs a smoke.

I nod, because she might be right about Maggie. People did sometimes vanish, not because they’d been taken or killed, but simply because they wanted to disappear. And Maggie had reason to escape her life, to slip into the void of endless highways and small towns and places where most don’t go looking.

Maybe I’m chasing a woman who doesn’t want to be found.

Behind the cash register, the woman finally reaches for the pack of cigarettes, sliding it across the counter so it’s resting on the very edge. Maybe it’s best to just let her be, let a woman go missing if that’s what she wants.

For a moment, she and I stare at one another—as if we’ve reached some understanding between us, a knowing that we’ve felt that same itch at the back of our throats at least once in our lives: that desire to be lost.

But then her expression changes: the skin around her mouth wrinkling like dried apricots, and a shiver of something untrusting settles behind her eyes, like she’s suddenly wary of who I am—who I really am—and why I’ve come asking questions after all these years. You a private detective? she asks, taking the pack of smokes in her hand and tapping out a single cigarette.

No. I scratch at my beard, along the jaw. It’s starting to feel too warm inside the little store—humid, boxed-in.

Then why’d you come all the way out here in the middle of winter, asking about that woman? You a boyfriend or something?

I shake my head, a staticky hum settling behind my eyes—that well-known ache trying to draw me into the past. I’m getting closer to Maggie, I can feel it.

The woman’s mouth makes a severe line, like she can see the discomfort in my eyes, and I take a quick step back from the counter before she can ask me what’s wrong. Thank you for your time, I tell her, nodding. Her mouth hangs open, like the maw of some wild animal waiting to be fed, and she watches as I retreat to the front doors and duck out into the night.

The sudden rush of cold air is an odd relief. Snow and wind against my overheated flesh.

But my head still thumps with the heavy need for coffee, for sleep—but also with the grinding certainty that I’m getting close. This gas station was the last place Maggie St. James was seen before she vanished, and my ears buzz with the knowing.

I climb back into the truck and press a hand to my temple.

I could use a handful of aspirin, a soft bed that doesn’t smell like industrial-grade motel detergent, the warmth of anything familiar. I crave things I’ve forgotten how to get. An old life, maybe. That’s what it really is: a need for something I’ve lost long ago. A life that’s good and decent and void of the bone-breaking pain that lives inside me now.

The truck tires spin on the ice, windshield wipers clacking back and forth, and I swerve out of the gas station parking lot back onto the road. I glance in the rearview mirror and see the woman watching me from the window of the little store, her face a strange neon-blue glow under the shivering lights.

And I wonder: Did Maggie St. James see that same face as she sped away five years ago? Did the same chill skip down her spine to her tailbone?

Did she know she was about to vanish?

---

The truck headlights break through the dark only a few yards ahead, illuminating the icy pavement like a black, moonless river, and casting ribbons of yellow-white through the snow-weighted trees that sag and drip like wet arms.

I drive for an hour up the same road that Maggie St. James followed, passing only one car going in the opposite direction, and a scattering of small, moss-covered homes.

Until at last, through the tall sentinel pines and sideways snow, a red barn appears.

What’s left of it.

The woman at the gas station had been right, the entire left side is caved in, a heap of splintered wood and old nails now buried in snow. But a metal weathervane still sits perched at the highest peak, the moving pieces locked in place by the cold or rust. It’s the same barn I saw in a police photograph that Maggie’s parents showed me. But in the photo, parked in the foreground, was a pale green, four-door, newer model Volvo: Maggie’s car. She had parked here alongside the road, gotten out of the driver’s seat, took her purse and her cell phone, then vanished.

I ease off the gas pedal and pull the truck onto the shoulder of the road, stopping in the very same place where she did.

It was midsummer when Maggie was here, the leaves on the trees a healthy, verdant green, the sun crisp and blinding overhead, and it must have warmed the inside of her car. Perhaps she had the windows rolled down, smelled the sweet scent of green manzanita and wildflowers growing up from the ditch beside the road. Perhaps she closed her eyes for a moment while she sat in her car, considering her options. Perhaps she even thought back on all the things that led her here: the faraway moments, the fragmented pieces of her life that only come into focus in times like this.

She was building a story in her mind, just like the fairy tales she wrote, but this story was her own—the ending not yet written. Or an ending only she foresaw.

Ahead of me, the mountain road makes a sharp left turn and a small solitary house—the only one for miles—sits tucked back in the pines, a porch light on, illuminating the gray front door. Mr. and Mrs. Alexander live there. They’ve lived in the squat, single-story home for forty-three years—most of their lives—and they were there when Maggie’s car was found. The police spent quite a bit of time interviewing the Alexanders. From the report, it’s obvious the detectives had their suspicions about Mr. Alexander, and they even dug up parts of the Alexander’s backyard, searching for remains: a thighbone, an earring, any clues that Maggie might have met her fate inside the Alexander’s home. One of the detective’s theories was that Maggie’s car may have broken down—even though it started right up when the tow truck came to haul it away—and maybe she wandered over to the Alexanders’ hoping for refuge, for help. But perhaps instead Mr. Alexander dragged her into his garage and bludgeoned her to death before burying her out back. They found a hammer in his garage with blood splatter marks on it, that was later determined to be rodent blood. He had used the hammer to end the suffering of a mouse caught in a trap. But that didn’t detour the police from keeping Mr. Alexander as their main—and only—suspect.

There weren’t many leads in the St. James case, and the local police found themselves pacing this length of road with little to go on. Cases go cold this way. They grow stagnant, lose momentum. Without a body, without any blood or sign of a struggle, Maggie St. James might have simply wanted to vanish—just like the woman at the gas station suggested. No crime in that.

I reach into the backpack on the seat beside me and pull out the tiny silver charm. My ears begin to buzz. The charm is shaped like a small book, with thin metal pages and a narrow spine, and it’s no bigger than my pinky nail.

When Maggie’s parents gave it to me, they explained that the charm once hung from a necklace that Maggie always wore. There were five charms on the necklace—five tiny silver books—one for every book in the Foxtail series. And each one had a number engraved on the front.

The one I hold in my hand is number three.

The charm was found by police a few feet from the trunk of Maggie’s car. Which was the only indication that there might have been a struggle: someone who pulled Maggie from the driver’s seat, kicking and clawing, and during the fray, the charm was torn free from her necklace and fell to the gravel beside the road. But there were no hair fibers found, no broken fingernails, no other clues to support this theory.

I close my eyes and clench my hand around the charm, feeling its sharp corners, its delicate weight in my palm—imagining it suspended at the end of a silver chain, against the warmth of Maggie’s chest, pressed between four other identical charms. The air pulses around me: cotton in my ears, a tightness in my throat, and I imagine sitting in Maggie’s green Volvo, just as she did, the idle summer breeze through the open window. The radio is on, playing an old country song, Waylon Jennings: She’s a good-hearted woman in love with a good-timin’ man. She loves him in spite of his ways that she don’t understand. The music rattles from the speakers, sailing out the open windows—like a memory plucked from the trenches of my mind. Except this memory doesn’t belong to me. It’s a slideshow, distorted and marred with tiny holes, like an old film through a sputtering projector.

I open the truck door and step out into the snow.

And even as the cold folds itself over me, I feel the warm afternoon sun against my skin, the hot pavement rising up beneath my boots. I feel what Maggie felt.

It’s been five years since she was here, but the memory replays itself across my mind as if I were standing beside her on that quiet afternoon. We all leave markers behind—dead or alive—vibrations that trail behind us through all the places we’ve been. And if you know how to see them, the imprints of a person can be found—and followed.

But like all things, they fade with time, become less clear, until finally they are washed over with new memories, new people who have passed through here.

I squeeze my fist, knuckles cracked and dry in the cold, drawing out the memory of Maggie from the small charm. She has brought me here. Dust and fluttering eyelashes beneath the midday sun. Memories shake through me, and I walk several paces up the road, to the exact place where she stood. A bird chatters from a nearby pine, bouncing from limb to limb, back to its nest. But when I open my eyes, the bird is gone—the trees covered in snow. No nests. No roosting jays and finches. All gone farther south for the winter months.

I glance back up the road—my truck parked in the snow just off the shoulder. There are no other cars, no logging trucks wheeling up into the forest. But in summer, surely there was more traffic. A family heading into the mountains for a weekend camping trip at one of the remote lakes, locals driving into town to fill up on gas and beer.

Yet, no one saw a woman slip from her car. No one saw a thing. Or if they did, they aren’t saying. Silence can hold a thousand untold stories.

The Alexanders’ porch light winks against the snow that has collected on the railing and front steps—the house itself giving the impression of sinking into the earth, doing its best not to collapse completely. I can hear Maggie breathing, the beat of her heart beneath her ribs—she wasn’t panicked or afraid. Her car didn’t break down like the police report had suggested. She stood on the side of the road and stretched her arms overhead, like she had merely stopped to work the tension from her joints after a long drive. Her eyes blinked against the sun and she drew in a deep breath, tilting her face to the sky.

She wanted to be here; she came with a purpose. But she didn’t turn for the Alexander’s house. She may have peeked at it briefly, observed it in the same way I do now, but then she shifted her focus toward the barn. Walking to the edge of the road to stare up at it.

Yet, the barn was not her destination either, it was only a clue. She was on the right path. She was close.

I mirror her footsteps, letting the memory pull me back to her car where she opened the trunk, metal hinges creaking as she bent to look inside. She hoisted out a backpack from the trunk and stuffed it with two bottles of water, a hooded sweatshirt, and a fresh pair of socks. In her front pocket was the pack of strawberry gum she purchased back at the store, and her cell phone.

Around her neck, she wore the silver necklace—five charms clinking together.

She slung the pack over her shoulders and locked the car, taking her keys with her. She planned on coming back. She wasn’t running away, not for good. She believed she would return to the car.

I watch as the memory of her takes several steps toward the side of the road, and when her hand brushed at her hair… it catches on something. Maybe the straps of her backpack snagged the silver charm, or just her fingertips, but it breaks free from the chain and falls to the gravel at her feet. She didn’t notice, didn’t hear it fall, and she strode on.

It wasn’t a struggle or a fight with an attacker that caused her to lose the charm: it came free on its own.

I watch her image walk down the embankment toward the barn, her pace assured, easy.

She only had enough supplies for a day’s hike. No sleeping bag, no tent, no dehydrated food to be reheated over a camp stove. She didn’t mean to vanish. Or she anticipated she’d have shelter and food wherever she was going.

She anticipated something other than what happened to her.

---

A little over a month ago, I was sitting in a truck stop parking lot on the northern border of Montana, considering crossing over into Canada and seeing how far north I could travel before the roads ended and there was nothing but permafrost and a sea of evergreens, when my cell phone rang.

An annoying little chirp, chirp, chiiirp.

I rarely answered it anymore—it rarely rang. The battery was perpetually low and I’d only ever charge it enough to keep it from dying, in case of emergencies. In case I got a flat tire. In case I wanted to call someone—which I never did.

But when I picked it up from the dashboard, I saw the name light up on the screen: Ben Takayama, my roommate from college, the guy I once drank a whole bottle of vintage bourbon with then drove all night to Reno only to sleep in the bed of his dinky Toyota truck, sweating under the midday sun as the alcohol seeped from our pores, then vomited in the bushes that lined a shady, neon-lit casino. No one even batted an eye at us. Not even the security guards. Ben and I had shared countless stupid, half-brained adventures together, most of which ended badly—with our wallets stolen, our dignity facedown in an alley gutter, our flesh bruised and sliced open. He was notably one of the few people who I still called a friend. And probably the only person whose call I would have answered in that moment, longing for a homemade meal and something familiar. Anything. Even a call from Ben.

Travis? he said on the other end when I answered, but I just sat there, mute. How long has it been since I talked to someone from the old days? How long have I been on the road, driving across state lines, heading east and then north? Two months? Three?

I cleared my throat. Hey.

No one’s heard from you in a while. His voice was strange, concerned—unusual for him. And I didn’t like the way it made me feel—like he was trying to peer beneath the shadow I had been hiding under. He exhaled, as if he knew I didn’t want his sympathy. I wanted the old days, before it all went to shit. Cheap beer and Friday nights in our dorm room, bad breakups and failed economics classes. I missed those days in the way most people miss their college years, even though at the time you don’t realize you’re living smack in the middle of the years you will tell stories about later. The years when you’re so damn broke you have to steal rolls of toilet paper from the restroom of a dive bar two blocks from campus that serves a weekly happy hour special: a beer and a slice of pie for four dollars.

You miss those years, but you also wouldn’t go back.

They were also the years when I drank because it dulled the effects of my ability. When I was drunk, and even hungover, I could touch objects and not feel a thing. No flashes of memory. No seizing images of the past. When my mind was clouded over with booze, I felt almost nothing. I made it through college this way. And sometimes, I still drink just to escape the things I don’t want to see—don’t want to remember.

I like that you’ve gone all Jack Kerouac and abandoned social norms, he began, living on the road like a fucking heathen. But you need to check in every once in a while.

On the dashboard sat a half-eaten pile of French fries that had begun to soak through the thin cardboard tray. I was hungry, but I couldn’t stomach to finish it.

Tell me where you’re at; maybe I can take a long weekend and come join you. He sounded earnest, a shiver in his voice, like he longed to escape the normalcy of his perfect, sterile life. Two kids and a corgi named Scotch and a wife who bakes sugar cookies in the shapes of trees and hearts every damn Thursday. Every goddamned Thursday, he told me once. Like he both loved and loathed it. He longed for dirty hotel rooms and shitty roadside diner food and smoky bars and smoky girls who all have the same names. Who all think you’re a better man than what you really are.

Ben wanted what I had.

But Ben’s average life had something mine didn’t: a home. Shelter. A place you went after a long day that folded you into its center and held you there, safe, protected from everything that lurked beyond your front door. Instead, I had an old truck that wheezed and choked every time I started it, and a quarter tank of gas. And that was

Reviews for A History of Wild Places

[Stevie Freeborn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Thee was a point where I couldn't stop reading just to find out what happened next

[Monica Eggerton · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This is such a slog im giving up. It takes talent to make a 400 page book feel like 1000 pages and this author has it.

[Josh Jackson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book!!! Had such a hard time putting it down. Loved the twists & turns.

[Latasha Renay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was between 3 and 4 stars for me. The author does an excellent job of setting up this ominous feeling. There's so much build up throughout the entirety of the novel that at the end I was just feeling a little let down. It was a good story but not a great one.

[narshkite · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For the first 75 pages of this read I was bored to tears. It seemed Mirza had chosen to write about the world's most boring family. In the end though, they were not that -- though they also were not the world's most interesting family.The story was the standard Asian immigrants with first generation American kids (there are versions sent in England as well) and the culture clash as they hold on to the old ways. They live in a miasma of disappointment, everyone is in pain. The parents either alienate or trap their children into a life they don't want and no one is happy. Relationships fragment. Disappointment matures into regret. The end.There are some books that fit this description that I love, The Namesake springs to mind, and many that are generally well-written and moderately successful at telling their stories but add nothing new or interesting, think Brick Lane. This falls somewhere in the middle but far closer to the Brick Lane end of the spectrum. The shifting timelines here were theoretically a good idea, though the childhood years up until various entanglements with the Ali family are unbelievably dull. My biggest issue was that I kept feeling like I was supposed to like Layla, but I didn't. (I do not have to like characters, in fact most of my favorite books are knee-deep in people I don't like. But Mizra tries so hard to convince the reader that Layla is a goddess, it makes it hard to get past her essential abdication of duty to actually think critically about a single thing.) She was terribly passive. She subjugated herself to the will of all around her, and she made her daughters do the same. I get that there is cultural norm guiding her, and I can empathize. The issue was that so much hinged on the writer putting Layla and her oldest daughter front and center as the moral compasses, the doers of good, the wise matriarchs. Leila was none of those things (Hadia was pretty impressive, perhaps too perfect.) Layla allowed her daughters' lives to be limited and made unhappy over and over, but spoke up loud and clear on behalf of her whiny son for every minor imagined slight. Her son never had a chance to learn he was not the center of the universe, so it is a foregone conclusion he will end up a mess. Her daughters never had a chance to see that they could be the center of the universe on occasion, so it was a foregone conclusion they would end up not knowing what they wanted or deserved, She was not a good mother to any of her children. The book spends the last third telling you she was the perfect mother and if only her husband had been more like her all would be well. That is bull. Those observations come from Rafiq (the father) in an end of book switch from 3rd to 2nd person that gives the reader Rafiq's direct testimony. This section rang a bit false. Throughout the book Rafiq is a tyrant when he is home. More often than not he is simply absent, and largely disengaged from his family. In his old age he becomes a certifiable sensitive guy filled with poignant memories of interactions with his children, long walks and star-gazing, the like of which we never saw in the first part of the book.I liked the Romeo and Juliet story here, and I wish there had been more focus on that relationship. It was good stuff though and beautifully written. I also wished Mirza had delved into Hadia's life. We are told she regrets her choices and she is not particularly happy with where she is, despite having gotten all she wished for, but I would like to to have seen more of that life beyond her wedding, parenting and caring for her father. It is like Mirza is telling us that women only matter in their capacity as daughters, wives, sisters, and mothers. (Oh wait, that is exactly what Mirza tells us.) If they had cut 90% of children sitting alone in the dark cut off from joy and forced to wear cheap ugly clothes, and instead explored Hadia's life after the wedding, that would have been great. Also, Huda disappears entirely after the wedding, poor dear. Finding out how her childhood impacted her would have been interesting, but instead she is a meaningless middle child and all we know of her is that she is a teacher in Chicago and she has failed her parents by being infertile.If you like dysfunctional immigrant family tales this is mostly engaging if a bit irksome.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A little too much narrative and not enough dialogue. I loved the last part, though.

[dawnlovesbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A Place for Us is a lovely story about an Indian Muslim family living in America and the battles that they face. Fatima Farheen Mirza will dazzle you with her poetic writing and break your heart with this moving story. I did not want it to end!The book begins as the family gathers for the wedding of their oldest daughter, Hadia. Hadia’s brother, Amar ran away and abandoned the family years ago, but he returns for this special occasion and we begin to learn about the family’s past. Hadia’s whole life she has worked hard for her father’s approval. She resented the fact that, “Everyone important was a boy. It was the son they cherished, the son their pride depended on, the son who would carry their name into the next generation.” In the end she blames herself for Amar’s isolation from the family. Hadia: “She had taken from him what, in another life, would have belonged to him by birth. She had worked hard to be as valuable as any son. Hadia’s belonging was proof of her brother’s alienation.”Amar was always a disturbing and reckless force. He constantly tested the limits of his father to see what he could get away with and he deserted his Muslim religion. He never felt at home and never felt his father’s love and approval. Hadia and Huda were their father’s daughters. It was their father they tried to impress, his approval they sought. Amar had always been a mamma’s boy. His mother, Layla, says of her son: “He is persistent and demanding, he knows what he wants and is devastated if he does not attain it. It alarms her: how little it takes to darken his mood.” As Amar grows older and distant, Layla wonders, “What she could ever hope to know of him was just a glimpse-like the beam of a lighthouse skipping out, only one stretch of waves visible at a time, the rest left in the unknowable dark.”Amar ran away after a bad fight with his father and never returned. They always had a tremulous relationship. Later in life, they both seem to regret the way they have hurt and treated one another. Amar, “wondered if he had turned his back on something far more meaningful than he realized the night he packed his bags in a hurry, thinking only of how angry he was, how harsh and unloving his father was about what Amar had no control over: who he was.” “He had been cheated out of knowing the best of his father; his father had reserved his kindness for others.” The last section of the book is told from Baba’s (the father) point of view and I think it was the most poignant part of the book. Baba, says of Amar: “I felt like I did not know how to interact with you. I wonder now what we could have been had had the courage to lift you into my arms. And say, “I am here for you and you will never lose me.”Everyone feels guilt and regret and wonders what they could have done differently to keep Amar at home with them. His mother, Layla also wonders, “Just how the limits to her belief in her son had so dangerously destroyed his possibilities.”Amidst the family drama, they all have to deal with the hate and prejudice they endure from being a Muslim in America. Baba: “That was my fight: to continue to do little things for people around me, so no one would find fault in my demeanor and misattribute it to my religion.”“How unlucky that one person has the power to determine the shape of another’s life.”“There was nothing the human heart could not grow to endure, that the miracle of the human heart is that it expands its capacity to love, to accept.”Please read it. It’s beautiful.

[sprainedbrain · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh, my heart.

[dknight0918 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book. Definitely one of the best I have read this year. I savored every single page. Hope to read many more books by Mirza.

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a beautiful book about a family. It takes a close look at the immigrant experience - two Indians who make a life in America and the competing pressures their children face in trying to walk the line between family culture & faith and the surrounding American culture they are being raised in. It is also an intimate look at the failures of parents and children to connect to understand and to communicate. There are sweet and beautiful moments and also heartbreaking betrayals. The most surprising thing was how the characters were both more and less that what I thought they were.

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Place For Us, Fatima Farheen Mirza, author; Deepti Gupta, Sunil Malhotra, narrators.This is a very powerful book that examines family dynamics and relationships in a Muslim family whose origins began in India, but who now reside in America. They are, essentially, strangers in a strange land, and although the children were born in America, they remain strangers, as well, in many ways. Rafiq, alone, had settled in America and made a good life for himself. He offered a marriage proposal to Layla's parents, in India, and Layla accepted it. She was raised to be obedient. She understood that her life would be determined by her husband’s life. This was all that a Muslim woman in India could expect and hope for. She had no idea what would await her in America, and she only hoped that her husband would be kind and not quick to anger. She was raised to serve him and his family. Time passed and as their family grew, two daughters, Hadia and Huda, and a son, Amar, filled out their home. Although the marriage had been arranged, the two grew to care for each other and were happy. They lived a quiet life surrounded by friends who were similar to them in their views and lifestyle. They followed their religion, praying, obeying its laws and keeping the culture for themselves and their children.However, life in America was different. It was more open. In school, the children were exposed to a less religious, less observant life. They began to feel different, and they began to want what the other children had in clothes, entertainment and opportunity. They wanted to belong. In their lifestyle, females were second class, but now their daughters wanted to have the same opportunities as sons. As their values, their religion and their culture were put to the test, Layla and Rafiq struggled to understand the problems they faced. They had no idea how to solve them. Their experience afforded them no ideas. The temptations here didn’t exist in their former lives. They did not know how to help or guide their children away from the temptations that would hurt them. They did not even recognize what was happening to their son when he became addicted to drugs and alcohol.Sibling rivalry, inexperience, misunderstandings and sadly, ignorance, combined to create conflicts that could have been avoided had they had a better understanding of what was happening. Rafiq and Layla were naïve because these problems they faced were new to them. They were not problems in their former lives. In America, the rules were not so hard and fast and there was opportunity for abuse. Weakness and insecurity in a child inspired the disobedience and the need to escape what hurt them, by any means available. The author illustrated the difficulty of adjusting to a strange, new environment, exposing the pitfalls and the consequences of innocent ignorance. The problems faced when one was not accepted on the basis of merit, but rather was judged by appearance and background, are examined carefully by this author. She illustrates the cultural divide and the bias that exists, even under the best of circumstances.This Muslim family from India was upwardly mobile. They had identified with and accomplished the American dream without having to give up their culture, but the world, at large, and circumstances beyond their control, were interfering and complicating their simple way of life, making it harder for their children to accomplish the same dreams of their parents. When the book begins, Rafiq and Layla are celebrating the marriage of their eldest daughter, Hadia, to a man she has chosen herself, defying tradition. She is hoping her estranged brother, Amar, will arrive. When the book ends, her brother Amar, is still estranged from the family. What happens in between, as the recollections and memories of each member of the family is revealed, shines a light on the immigrant experience in America, in a new way.

[nbmars · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This novel is centered almost exclusively on one family. It is narrated by four of its members at different points throughout the book. The parents, Rafiq and Layla, are devout Shia Muslims living in California and trying to raise their three children in the tenets of a very absorbing faith. The oldest child, their daughter Hadia, is getting married as the book begins, but we never stay in one particular time period for long, with the temporal perspective shifting even inside each chapter. The only son, Amar, is in some ways the focus of all of the family. For one thing, in their culture [note to self: resist urge to add, and in almost every culture], males are valued more than females. Females are first the responsibility of fathers, then of husbands. Hadia feels this difference acutely, musing “…hundreds and hundreds of years had passed [since the time of the Prophet], and it was still the son they cherished, the son their pride depended on, the son who would carry their name into the next generation.” Hadia makes some fateful choices in her life based on her competitive desire to matter more than the son to her father. Rafiq and Layla’s daughters resist some of the traditional customs of their culture, such as having their spouses selected for them by their parents, but for the most part, their entire lives are based around their faith and the obligations required of them because of it. But Amar did not buy into that faith, and it made him feel like an outsider in his own home, as well as in their insular community. Amar was especially worried by the story his mother told them when they were little. She warned that every sin is written down by an angel. Moreover, “you get a speck on your heart, a dark, small speck. . . . . each of them like stains.” “A permanent marker stain?” Amar asked. “Yes,” Mumma said, “a permanent stain. And with every sin, the heart grows harder and darker. Until it is so heavy and black it cannot tell good from evil anymore. It cannot even tell that it wants to be good.” This story affected Amar deeply. He goes through his life, unbelieving, sinning, and fearing that he is not only “ruined” for this life, but for the next.Students of David Hume will recognize the problem that besets Amar. As Hume wrote in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in 1779, both fear and hope are part of religious belief, but: "When melancholy, and dejected, [the believer] has nothing to do but brood upon the terrors of the invisible world, and to plunge himself still deeper in affliction."Layla is not a depicted as a villain in spite of the stories she told her children and in spite of another huge harm she does to Amar later in life. As the author limns her character, Layla is a mother trying to do her best for children she loves. Similarly, Rafiq is rough on the kids at times, but doesn’t know a better way to be. When Rafiq finally narrates in the last part of the book, we learn about his motivations, his fears, and his hopes, and it is a stunning insight into a perspective of which not even his children or his wife were aware.Evaluation: This is a very impressive novel. The only odd note is that the fourth child, Huda, never narrates, and we never get to know her much at all. Still, the book is full of issues to mull and discuss, from the place of religious beliefs in one’s life and how best to impart them, to gender roles and expectations, to the pitfalls and rewards of parenting. The fact that this family is Muslim rather than Christian or Jewish does not affect the relevance of the universal problems of raising kids, growing up, and growing older. Highly recommended!

[strandbooks_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of powerful stories about parent and child relationships. A Place for Us centers on a Muslim-Indian family living in California. The parents want to keep their culture, language, and religion as their children drift away to American lifestyles. It also deals with the universal challenge of children who are so vastly different that the parents struggle on what battles to fight and who to pay attention to in the stressful times. I really enjoyed the multiple points-of-view. I was never left wondering what each character is thinking, but that also makes me want to shake them and say “tell your mom and dad what you are feeling!!” Or “it doesn’t matter what the community will think! He’s your son!” Always easy to be the person looking in and coming up with the answers.The story jumps around chronologically since they are sharing their memories. It works, but does require more attention from the reader to tie all the memories together.

[akh3966_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful book. Written for me right now.

[ccayne_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rich family saga of an Muslim immigrant family from India living in California. Many of this family's struggles and triumphs could happen to any family and others are unique to their history and religion. You will care for these people and empathize with the difficulties each of them face.

[deslivres5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Place for Us follows a San Francisco-based family with Hyderabadi Shia Muslim roots living and interacting with their community. The novel tells the story of the family of five from the viewpoint of the father, mother, eldest daughter and son through a span of about 40 years (circa 1980-present day), jumping back and forth through the time periods, sometimes revisiting the same pivotal moments through a different person's perspective. The main thread throughout is the children's desires and issues with following the paths set out by their devout parents, and the father-son dynamic. I found Part 4 to be especially poignant and heart-breaking.

[quirkylibrarian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Eloquent and beautifully written, this sedately-paced, dramatic family saga is thought-provoking, desperately sad but also hopeful. Mothers and sons. Fathers and sons. I love the immigrant and Muslim experiences quietly underlining the whole story- I feel stretched and challenged, edified and mystified.

[alanna1122 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked a lot about this book. It is a very rich detailed account of a first generation family's experience in the United States. I really enjoyed reading about all the customs and traditions of this family. I did wish that there was a glossary or footnotes in the book to help me along in learning and understanding. I spent a lot of time googling - not always successfully -- to get a picture or understanding of what was being discussed. The pacing of the book is also pretty slow. I found, particularly in the last quarter of the book that it really slowed down and it was a little harder to pick up. All in all though - my favorite books are family sagas and this was a good one that felt fresh to me.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those books that gets 5 stars on a multitude of fronts -- excellent writing, a beautiful story, and all the subtle and complicated issues and conflicts that are inherent with any family.The book centers around a Indian American Muslim family who live in a close knit Muslim community in California. Each family member faces many of the difficulties in fitting in to American customs and society, trying to walk that fine line of assimilation and following tradition. The plot is carefully scripted and told in a non-sequential timeline which was a little confusing at first, but definitely added to the overall experience.This would be a perfect choice for a bookclub that likes literary fiction. Definitely one of my favorites of the year!

[beamis12 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow!! I just blown away by the fact that this is a first novel, the story and theme so universal. A Muslim Indian family in America, trying to maintain it's own beliefs and culture, while facing modernity. This family, mother, father, two daughters ,Hadia and Huda, and the you test, a son Amar who never really feels he belongs. We come to know this family inside and out,the book starts with the marriage of Hadia,and then goes back and forth, to various beginnings and endings. While their beliefs may not be mine, many of the problems between parents and siblings are indeed universal. As they struggle to find their place in the larger world, the children also struggle to find their place in the family. Living up to parental expectations, or in Amar's case the struggle to find his place anywhere at all. Trying to carvea path between cultural and religious beliefs and the lessening of this expectation to fit with the place they now find themselves. The story of this family in all its totality is both moving and insightful. The barriers to acceptance by children and parents after 911, when all Muslims were viewed with suspicion and in many cases outright hate. By showing us the commonalities in their family and our own, this young author has shown us that ww may in fact may not be so different. The last part of the book focuses on the father's point of view,alone. How he thought, what went wrong and what he wished he had done differently. It is full of anguish and remorse, and we clearly see for the first time what this Muslim, husband, father has gone through, from his own childhood to the way he tried to instill family values and religious beliefs in his children. It does end on a note of positivity, sadness yes, but hopefully as well. This is an outstanding piece of fiction, in my opinion, I quite frankly fell hard for this family, with all it's flaws and things mistakenly done out of love. I wasn't ready to leave them at books end, and I believe if you read, or at least I hope, that you will see some of the same values, if not the religious beliefs, that we try to instill in our own families. This is also the first book published under the Sarah Jessica Parker imprint of Random House, and it is a wonderful beginning.ARC from bookbrowse and Random House.

[piratejenny_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read this for a book club/book swap. I don't really care for family drama literature and would not have picked this up otherwise. But the writing was excellent and the characters were very real. So if this sort of book is your thing, I do recommend it.

[bettytaylor56 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am amazed that this is Ms. Mirza’s first book. It is beautifully written, describing the family dynamics of a Muslim Indian-American family and their intense desire to remain devout to their religion and continue their cultural traditions here in the US. Just like any family, anywhere, of any faith, the children strive to live up to their parents’ expectations of them, often feeling frustration at the constraints they feel their parents have unfairly put upon them. The story opens with the wedding of the oldest daughter Hadia to Tariq, a modern marriage of love rather than the traditional arranged marriage. On her daughter’s wedding day, mother Layla thinks back to the early days of her arranged marriage with husband Rafiq who was an orphan who moved to America on his own, got a job, and established a good life for himself and his new immigrant wife Layla. They had three children - Hadia, Huda, and Amar. While all three of the children struggle with the decision to follow their parents’ religious and cultural practices or not, Amar finds it especially difficult. He spends his entire life trying to find where he fits in and never truly feels that he belongs anywhere. The book alternates between the characters’ past reflections on life and their current lives. Especially poignant are Layla’s reflections. Hadia muses upon why (in her opinion) Amar was her parents’ favorite child, why it seemed only men were important. I loved her biblical comparisons – “The Prophets and the Imans had been men.” Jonah was special, as was Abraham, Joseph, and Noah. But it was Moses’ sister Miriam who came up with the idea of putting him in a basket to save his life. Just as important were the Pharaoh’s wife who saved made Moses her own, Mary who bore Jesus, the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. Hadia has asked her beloved brother Amar to attend her wedding even though Amar has been estranged from the family for three years. The relationship between Amar and his father has always been especially strained. I enjoyed reading about the religious and cultural practices of the family. As I read I could see many similarities between the Muslim practices and my own Jewish practices. This book is a gives us the gift of looking into another culture with the utmost sensitivity and genuineness. The conflicts encountered, the family conflicts, the feeling of isolation, the heartbreaks – all are portrayed with such compassion for the characters. This is a family you will not soon forget.I received an ARC of this book from BookBrowse.com’s First Impressions program. All opinions are my own.

[niquetteb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A novel surrounding a family of Indian-American Muslims. The story flashes back a few times, sometimes within the same chapter. This format can be confusing, but once the reader falls into step with the story,the exploration of family dynamics is revealed.

[teachlz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My Review of “A Place For Us” by Fatima Farheen MirzaTitle: Family Tradition and Love5 *****“A Place for Us” by Fatima Farheen Mirza is intriguing and captivating story of an Indian-American Muslim family. The struggle and conflict of observing one’s faith, tradition, needs and wants is intense. A constant theme of finding balance in a complicated society. The genres for the novel are Fiction and Women’s Fiction. The story mostly takes place in California. The timeline in this story vacillate between the past and present as it pertains to the events and characters.The author describes her colorful cast of characters as complicated, complex and confused. The story can be told as seen through the eyes of each character. I appreciate that the author describes the religion, and traditions, culture and food, and clothing. Hadia, the oldest daughter in the family is getting married to a man that she chose herself, breaking away from the tradition of having a husband chosen for her. Hadia is a physician and has invited their estranged brother Amar to her wedding. Amar does come to the wedding, and surprises his parents Layla and Rafiq , and his other sister Huma. Betrayals, conflicts, and questions of forgiveness come up at this time.The author describes the time period around 9/11, when Rafiq encourages his daughters to wear American clothes, not to be singled out. Amar gets into a major racist fight at school, when other students accuse him of being a terrorist. The students tell him to go home. Amar tries to deal with the fact that America is his home.The author discusses the family dynamics of love, support , change, forgiveness, acceptance and hope. I would recommend this story for those readers who appreciate an emotional conflicted inspirational story. I received an ARC for my honest review.

[lisa5127 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There are a lot of 5-star reviews for this book, so I know I am in the minority here, but I really did not enjoy this book. My number one reason for the low rating is how often the author jumped timelines within each chapter with no indication of where, in time, we were jumping. It might be back 10 years, it might be back 1 year. Then, we might come back to where we started, or maybe to a different time. There was no rhyme or reason to the time hops and it became very annoying to me. We start at a wedding, then hop forward and back and forward and back, but never back the wedding for at least half the book. It just made no sense to write it that way. The only time I KNEW when we were was on the day the Twin Towers were hit.My other reason for the low rating is that the characters were not all evenly developed. The story really focuses on Amar, but we hear a lot about him and very little from him. We get to know Hadia, mom, and dad really well both thru their actions and their words. Huda is the typically ignored middle child of the story, she is there, but the story really would not have been any different if she was not there. I think she was just there so they could all wonder what it would have been like if Amar had a brother. Hadia and Huda had each other and they both turned out well, so Amar would have been OK if he had a brother.The only part I really enjoyed reading was the very end when we hear from the dad. But even that was a let down since the story seemed to have just stopped, rather than having any sort of satisfying ending.I would have stopped reading this book at about 100 pages if it had not been a book club selection. I'm sure our discussion will be very good, even if the book was not.

[crazy4reading · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am only giving this book 3 stars because I just couldn't get into the characters. I had trouble keeping the characters straight along with trying to figure out what time period I was in. I felt the writing was a bit off for my liking. When I started the book I really thought I was going to enjoy it but when I started the second chapter I was confused because I went from the wedding to her being a young girl. Other books that I have read similar to this style have also been hard to enjoy.The ending had more of my interest than the book as a whole did.

[haymaai · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As I navigated the pages of ‘A Place For Us,’ I felt like I was being transported into the lives of a Muslim immigrant family to realize all the constraints and religious culture that permeated through all aspects of their lives. What is so amazing, is that the debut author Fatima Mirza helps the reader to understand the many counterpoints of the Muslim-Indian culture, how Layla and Rafiq (the mother and father of the first generation) cling to strict observance of religious and familial traditions, while their two daughters, Hadia and Huda, break away from parental expectations to make meaningful lives for themselves. Hadia marries an Indian man of her own choosing, outside of the acceptable realm of her family’s culture. Both women establish themselves as successful individuals with careers in teaching and medicine, roles that might have remained unrealized had they lived by parental expectations. Meanwhile, their younger brother, Amar, becomes the ‘black sheep’, overtly castigating against the traditions of family and their community. He writes poetry in a notebook, much to the chagrin of his father, and eventually delves into drugs and alcohol as he navigates a slippery path toward finding himself. Although this book was culturally enlightening for me, it was not a quick read, and the plot moved methodically along, rather than at riveting pace. Nevertheless, I would recommend this novel as offering interesting perceptions of the Muslim immigrant experience as seen from various perspectives.

[cariola_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is not your usual story of an immigrant family struggling to adjust to life in America--far from it. It's the story of a family whose cultural background just happens to be Indian Muslim, and they share the joys and trials of many other families of all religions and ethnicities. Mirza's novel is divided into four section, each focused on the point of view of one family member: Eldest daughter Hadia, mother Layla, son Amar, and father Rafik (middle daughter Huda, while not given her own section, plays a role in every family member's story) The main conflicts revolve around Amar, the youngest child and only son. While his mother loves him unconditionally yet worries about his "difference" from her other children, his father has raised all three of his children with high expectations that Amar simply cannot meet. His sisters (especially Hadia) also try to protect Amar from their father's harsh dictates and frequent anger and frustration, but eventually, things come to a head, tearing the family apart. Hadia's section is the most straightforward, simply telling what happened in the past and on her wedding day, the event that begins the novel. Layla's story struggles to understand both her son and her husband while considering the sacrifices she has made to come to a new country with her new husband. In his section, Amar presents events from his own point of view, dominated by a the sadness of numerous losses. But it is the final section, Rafiq's, that really tears at the heart. This is a man in pain, a man who simply wanted to raise successful children strong in their faith, but now, late in life, recognizes his mistakes and reveals long-hidden feelings. Overall, this is a very moving novel, beautifully written. Mirza does a fine job of subtly presenting the differences between Muslim families and others while, more importantly, stressing their similarities. I highly recommend it and look forward to her next book.

[bookscookslooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Place for Us is the story of a family. It begins with Layla, a young Muslim woman who is told that she is to be married. This man, Rafiq will take her away to America where he has a job and good prospects. Layla follows her new husband away from all she knows. She soon finds herself pregnant and one daughter leads to another and then finally a son.Haida and Huda the girls grow up without issues. They are well behaved and follow the rules put forth in the household. Amar, the boy is another story. His birth was a bit traumatic so his mother clings to him and Amar returns the love. This troubles Rafiq for reasons he can’t really articulate. His own father died when he was still quite young and he wonders at his ability to be a father himself.As the children grow and the family tries to live a devout, Muslim life in the time after 9/11 each one tries to find their place in the family and the world. Rafiq and Layla try to maintain the old ways while the children look to the future. Amar is constantly at odds with his father while being protected by his mother and resented by his sisters. It makes for some tense family dynamics.There is a very strong, compelling and rich family drama within the pages of this book. Dealing with universal issues of love, loyalty, faith, and trust there is much to mine within a family that has a patriarch that rules with a somewhat iron fist within cultural norms that demand obedience. Clashes of traditions further add to the mix. The characters are all very unique and very human with all the good and bad that go into making each of us. So you can see where this would be a book that would keep you invested and wanting to get lost in the story.But that is the problem. You can’t just get lost in the story. It hops all over the place in time with no real logic. There are breaks but you don’t know after a section if you will be in the same time, a few years back or decades back. It’s downright confusing. There were seven main characters and each one would go back and forth in time within a chapter. Heck, various characters would go to different times from section break to section break. You had to really keep it together to remember what was what. I had it sorted by about halfway through but I had some frustrations. Were it not for this the book would have a higher rating.Maybe others will be fine with all of the back and forth. It did not work for me. The underlying story was strong so that did save the novel. I respect that the present is built upon the past but there are easier ways to get to the point.

[janismack · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read about 100 pages and stoped. I could not sympathize with the caracters. I was hoping something interesting would happen but it never did.