By Norah Piehl
At one point in Vanessa Manko’s debut novel, THE INVENTION OF EXILE, her protagonist, Austin Voronkov, stands on the Mexico-U.S. border, just yards away from the country he both resents and longs for: “The beads of sweat formed along his back, tears rolled down his face, and his heart felt dry and parched with anguish as he felt something break, a deep terrible split, like a tendon torn, his heart beating faster, a sinking feeling as if he were falling from a great height, though when he looked he knew he was on the ground, and the tearing pulled and stretched and, as much as he tried to throw himself across, he felt it all fall away from him.”
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