Nights in the Asylum

Miri's daughter is dead and her husband has been unfaithful to her; lost in her grief, she flees to her Cuban grandmother's old house in a town where outsiders and any hint of eccentricity are viewed with suspicion. There she encounters Zett Moran and her baby, seeking refuge from her abusive policeman husband, and Aziz, an illegal Afghan immigrant, and takes them in. The three adults inhabit the same space, yet move uneasily around each other. They have reasons to be wary, but it's not easy to live under one roof and remain completely isolated, and Miri soon finds herself caught up in events and relationships out of her control: she's searching for some kind of equilibrium, but every action has a consequence, and the townspeople's reactions to Miri's charity are not necessarily all positive, predicatable - or balanced. Written in spare, taut prose, "Nights in the Asylum" is Miri's story; it is also a story of home, of belonging, of leaving one home and trying to make another, where-ever and how-ever you can.


Genre: Literary Fiction