What We've Lost Is Nothing A Novel

by Snyder, Rachel Louise

• ISBN13: 9781476725208
• ISBN10: 1476725209
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781476725222
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2020-06-09
• Publisher: Scribner
• More Book Details
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Summary

In her “keenly observed” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis) debut, Rachel Louise Snyder, author of the memoir Women We Buried, Women We Burned and the award-winning No Visible Bruises, chronicles the twenty-four hours following a mass burglary in a Chicago suburb and the suspicions, secrets, and prejudices that surface in its wake.

Nestled on the edge of Chicago’s gritty west side, Oak Park is a suburb in flux. To the west, theaters and shops frame posh houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. To the east lies a neighborhood still recovering from urban decline. In the center of the community sits Ilios Lane, a pristine cul-de-sac dotted with quiet homes that bridge the surrounding extremes of wealth and poverty.

On the first warm day in April, Mary Elizabeth McPherson, a lifelong resident of Ilios Lane, skips school with her friend Sofia. As the two experiment with a heavy dose of ecstasy in Mary Elizabeth’s dining room, a series of home invasions rocks their neighborhood. At first the community is determined to band together, but rising suspicions soon threaten to destroy the world they were attempting to create. Filtered through a vibrant pinwheel of characters, Snyder’s tour de force evokes the heightened tension of a community on edge as it builds towards an explosive conclusion.

Incisive and panoramic, What We’ve Lost Is Nothing illuminates the evolving relationship between American cities and their suburbs, the hidden prejudices that can threaten a way of life, and the redemptive power of tolerance in a community torn asunder. “Ideas abound in this thoughtful story, a demonstration of the author’s years of experience as a community organizer. What We’ve Lost Is Nothing has the stamp of authenticity” (The Washington Post).

Author Biography

Rachel Louise Snyder is the author of Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade, the novel What We’ve Lost Is Nothing, and No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New Republic, Slate, NPR, and elsewhere. No Visible Bruises won the 2018 Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, the 2020 Hillman Book Prize, and the New York Public Library’s Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism; and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award, and it was named a top ten book of 2019 by the New York Times. Snyder received an Overseas Press Award for her work on This American Life. A 2020 Guggenheim fellow, Snyder lives in Washington, DC, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Journalism at American University. Follow her on Twitter at @RLSWrites.