Cara Hoffman Knihy

A little girl who disguises herself as an old man, an addict who collects dollhouse furniture, a crime reporter confronted by a talking dog, a painter trying to prove the non-existence of god, and lovers in a penal colony who communicate through technical drawings--these are just a few of the characters who live among the ruins. Cara Hoffman's short fictions are brutal, surreal, hilarious, and transgressive, celebrating the sharp beauty of outsiders and the infinitely creative ways humans muster psychic resistance under oppressive conditions. RUIN is both bracingly timely and eerily timeless in its examination of an American state in free-fall: unsparing in its disregard for broken, ineffectual institutions, while shining with compassion for the damaged left in their wake. The ultimate effect of these ten interconnected stories is one of invigoration and a sense of possibilities--hope for a new world extracted from the rubble of the old.

Five months after she disappeared, Wendy White's body is found in a ditch just off one of Haeden's main roads. Suddenly, reporter Stacy Flynn has a big story, but no one wants to talk to her in this small upstate New York town. Then fifteen-year-old Alice Piper, an imaginative student with a genius IQ and strong ideals, begins to connect the dots of Wendy's disappearance and death when a second crime rocks the town to its core.