Search results for ""Author Stefan Merrill Block""

"An exquisitely moving novel of sorrow, love, and the miracle of human connections." Kamila Shamsie, author of Home FireOne warm night Oliver Loving joins his classmates at the annual school dance, hoping for a glimpse of the girl he's long been in love with. But as music fills the gymnasium and students timidly approach the dancefloor, a young man enters with a gun, leaving five people dead and Oliver in a coma. A decade later, Oliver remains in limbo, wordless and paralyzed. His brother has long since fled. His father has turned to drink in the Texan desert. His town has withered, its people unable to forget. Only his mother, buoyed by the result of fresh neurological tests, holds onto the unshakeable hope that Oliver will soon wake up, and finally answer the questions that have slept with him for ten long years.

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An exquisitely moving novel of sorrow, love, and the miracle of human connections. - Kamila Shamsie, author of Home FireFor ten years, a secret has slept with Oliver Loving.One moonless November night, Oliver shyly joined his classmates at Bliss County Day School's annual dance, hoping for a glimpse of the object of his unrequited affections, an enigmatic Junior named Rebekkah Sterling. But as the music played in the gymnasium, a troubled young man snuck in through the school's back door with a gun. It was all over in a few terrible minutes; the dire decisions this man made that night, and the unspoken story he carried, forever transformed Oliver's world and tore the town of Bliss, Texas apart.Nearly ten years later, Oliver Loving still lies wordless and paralyzed at Crockett State Assisted Care Facility, the fate of his mind unclear. Meanwhile, his parents and his brother try to cope in their own disparate self-destructive ways, whilst Rebekkah, who left Texas long ago, still refuses to speak about her own part in that tragic night. Oliver Loving is a brilliant and beautifully told story of family, as heart-breaking as it is profound. It is a novel of the myths we make; the ties that bind us and the forces that keep us apart.

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