"The God of War"

What drew me to "The God of War" was the setting. On my recent trip to California I visited the environmental catastrophe that is the Salton Sea. A failed irrigation project from many years ago, the sea now stinks. Thousands of fish have died as the salt content rises and the water evaporates. The sea is a major stopover point for migrating birds but they, too, are dying in high numbers. I've never seen so many foreclosure signs in a neighborhood.

When I arrived home, I came across Marisa Silver's new novel (being published at the end of the month). I saw that it followed a single mother and her two young sons living in a trailer at the edge of the Salton Sea so I began reading. What a moving tale of a family trying to do the best they can with few resources. I don't often cry at endings. Silver isn't an unknown. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker and this isn't her first novel, but I hope it does well.