"Passionate, lyrical, and deeply humane, this tale of two sisters caught in a war without end moves effortlessly through space and time . . . an astonishing first novel." --Andrea Barrett

Marianna watches her older sister Alaine collect the detritus of war from around Beirut--bullets, shrapnel, grenades, a gas mask. These objects, some taken from dead bodies, catalogue Alaine's retreat into a dangerous depression. As the family struggles to endure the daily violence of the Middle East conflict, it is Marianna who becomes her older sister's keeper, watching for any signal that...