Shambles

In a landscape dominated by refinery smoke and rumors, Delia Arco spends her workdays counseling teenagers as outcast as she once was, and her nights caring for the baby daughter she loves fiercely. Searching furiously for the mother in herself, she struggles to understand her own mother's seedy life and puzzling disappearance. When an intern whose life story is the stuff of true-crime books insinuates herself into Delia's life, Delia wonders who to let in and who to keep out, who to help and who to let slide. Then one night her world cracks open. In this haunting, suspenseful novel, Debra Monroe asks: What happens when a family seems to blow apart? How can survivors ride out the grisly aftermath once an essential piece of happiness has been removed?