A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

And too were carried the small treasures that had made Dokka's house his own. Carrying that lumber the forty meters from the forest had left his knuckles blistered, his underarms sopping, but now a few hours of flames had lifted what had taken him months to design, weeks to carry, days to build, all but the nails and rivets, all but the hinges and bolts, all into the sky. He had drawn the blueprints and chopped the hardwood and cut it into boards and turned them into a room and when Dokka had promised to help him build an addition to his own house, should he ever have a child, Akhmed had thanked his friend and walked home, the knot in his throat unraveling into a sob when the door closed behind him. Not seven years earlier, Akhmed had helped Dokka build an addition so the girl would have a room of her own. A few orange embers hissed in pools of gray snow, but all else was char. The snow softened around their boots as they stared across the street to the wide patch of flattened ash. 'Havaa, we should go,' he said, but neither moved. He had led the girl to the middle of the street before he raised his eyes to what had been her house. When she emerged from the bedroom, looking older than her eight years, he took her suitcase and she followed him out the front door.

While the girl dressed, Akhmed, who hadn't slept at all, paced outside the bedroom door, watching the sky brighten on the other side of the window glass the rising sun had never before made him feel late.

Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader's guide and bonus content from the author.On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones.

A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja's world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weaves together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. For Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded. When their lifelong neighbor Akhmed finds Havaa hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. New York Times Notable Book of the Year In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night and then set fire to her home.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra