Life In Miniature

Book excerpt: From a powerful new voice in fiction comes a compelling debut about the delicate bond between daughters and mothers, and about leaving everything you know in order to find the place where you belong. Adie has always known she was different. There's her size, for one thing. Born three months premature, Adie is the smallest of her peers. Then there's Adie's mother, who at first glance seems like so many other 1980s moms--clipping coupons and attending Feel the Burn aerobics classes. But beneath the surface is something erratic and unpredictable, something that makes her drag Adie and her older sister, Miriam, from one rental apartment to the next--until Miriam runs away. Adie is left behind with her mother, who is convinced their lives are in real danger and takes Adie on a crazy run across northern California. Now Adie faces a stark choice: submit to this increasingly surreal adventure, or grow up in ways she never imagined. . . "Life in Miniature is a stunning double portrait, subtly capturing a daughter's misconceptions of her mother's delusions--while simultaneously revealing the consequences for both--in a compulsively readable and deeply insightful first novel." --Jonathon Keats, author of The Book of the Unknown ". . .a book of intelligence and grace that will make you laugh and cry." --Terry Gamble, author of Good Family Linda Schlossberg received her PhD in English literature from Harvard University, where she is the Assistant Director of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. Her fiction has been recognized by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, the National League of American PEN Women, and Writers at Work. She has also received research and writing grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as several awards for excellence in teaching. Linda lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.