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A school shooting in a Texan border town leaves a family in crisis, a community torn apart, and the boy who holds the secret cocooned in a coma for ten years.

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"An exquisitely moving novel of sorrow, love, and the miracle of human connections." Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire

One 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 Fire´

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Stefan Merrill Block grew up in Plano, Texas. His first book, The Story of Forgetting, was an international bestseller and the winner of Best First Fiction at the Rome International Festival of Literature. Stefan´s stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR´s Radiolab, GRANTA, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Stefan lives in Brooklyn.

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