In 1985, the shooting of Mr. Marfeo disrupts the quiet suburban neighborhood of Maple Bay and prompts thirteen-year-old Zinnia Zompa to reorganize everything she knows about her parents—their preoccupations, obsessions, and above all, their battles with each other. As her understanding of the world grows, Zinnia sees how the violence she witnesses is part of a larger pattern of domination, one that shadows the world far beyond her neighborhood, and that coming of age means reckoning with this darkness.

Praise for L'Air du Temps (1985)

“It’s 1985, the MTV flag is on the moon, and Lincoln Continentals are triplicating in the New England suburb of Maple Bay, where everyone who’s not in jail or divorce court is going off the deep end. A vintage murder-mystery that’s evergreen as a chemically-treated lawn, this smart, tight novella is the arresting and singular cry of thirteen-year-old Zinnia Zompa, who’s troubling the shadows, swerving toward an awakening that might or might not be her ticket out of town.”

—Kirstin Allio, author of Buddhism for Western Children, winner of the Iowa Review Prize for Fiction