Others of My Kind

At age eight, Jenny Rowan was abducted and kept for two years in a box beneath her captor's bed. Eventually she escaped and, after living for eighteen months on cast-offs at the local mall, was put into the child-care system. Suing for emancipation, at age sixteen she became a legal adult. Nowadays she works as a production editor for the local public TV station, and is one of the world's good people. One evening she returns home to find a detective waiting for her. Though her records are sealed, he somehow knows her story. He asks if she can help with a young woman who, like her many years before, has been abducted and traumatized. Initially hesitant, Jenny decides to get involved, reviving buried memories and setting in motion an unexpected interchange with the president herself. As brilliantly spare and compact as are all of James Sallis's novels, "Others of My Kind" stands apart for its female protagonist. Set in a near future of political turmoil, it is a story of how we overcome, how we shape ourselves by what happens to us, and of how the human spirit, whatever horrors it undergoes, will not be put down. *San Francisco Chronicle Biographical Note: James Sallis is the acclaimed author of more than two dozen volumes of fiction, poetry, translation, essays, and criticism, including the Lew Griffin series, "Drive" (made into the movie of the same name), "Cypress Grove," "Cripple Creek, " and "Salt River." His biography of the great crime writer Chester Himes is an acknowledged classic. Sallis lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife, Karyn, and an enormous white cat. Review Quotes: "Sallis has always been the master of doing more with less, as he demonstrates once again with this startling experimental novel...The theme of working with 'what you have left, ' a constant in Sallis's world, permeates every sentence of this slim, insightful work. " -"Publishers Weekly" (starred review) "Surprising power: Jenny is an irresistible character, and there are flashes here of insight and sweetness." -"Kirkus Reviews" "This will make you think about how--indeed, if--you interact with the world; how we construct our lives; how we heal from tragedy; how to carry on when nothing makes sense...this slim novel offers a wellspring for contemplation." -"Booklist