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Small Treasons

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With writing that is both devastating and tender, Mark Powell brings his acclaimed eye to an American marriage on the verge of rupture, spinning an all-too-current tale of the world we live in and the world we fearand how we may not be able to tell the two apartperfect for fans of Adam Johnsons Fortune Smiles and Denis Johnsons The Laughing Monsters.

Tess Maynard is coming apart. At home with her three young children in her husbands Georgia hometown, people keep asking if shes depressed, if she and John are okay.

Secretly, shes becoming obsessed with the war on terroran ISIS beheading video in particular. Something about the victims captivity on the computer screen resonates with her. Something inside of her demands endless prayers for a world gone mad.

The carefully constructed life of her husband is likewise beginning to unravel. Now a college counselor, Johns former life bears persistently into the present. Once a contractor at a CIA black site that interrogated suspected terroristsand one innocent civilianhe is given a choice by the Justice Department: either help with a problem in the homeland, or they investigate.

Forced by an old colleague to spy on a new one, Johns experiences abroad come home to roost in Georgia. For his wife, for his family, he goes along with the game. But just as he and Tess work to salvage their life together, the world comes between them in the form of a young man slowly being radicalized by the professor John is reporting on.

In a moment Tess imagined and never wanted to see, the intersection of their three lives is as devastating as the bombers explosion of hate and metal, and as inevitable as the battle between powers great and personal.