This Is Salvaged

"A daring and original voice, trembling with power and anger and vulnerability." - Namita Gokhale
"It takes tremendous courage and wit to look with wonder at the darkest, most shameful places in the human heart and make them hilarious, tender, and deeply moving; Vauhini Vara ... can do this magic with astonishing ease." - Lauren Groff
In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This Is Salvaged search fervently for meaning through one another:
A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbor who is descending into dementia...

A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators...

One sister consumes the ashes of another...

And, in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible's specifications...
In stories that are wise and funny, beautiful and strange, Vauhini Vara-author of the award-winning The Immortal King Rao, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize-writes with compassion, but without sentimentality, about loss and longing and attempting to find hope in the midst of grief.