Laika
Description
You feel watched. It's nothing new, but the feeling is amplified when the streets are busy. That hum in your head is now a buzz.
Laika desperately wishes for a new life. At fourteen, she's hardened and independent, living on the streets of Southern California. She's finally free of her volatile home but yearns for true stability.
As Graham, a waiter at a local Russian restaurant, watches Laika steal and struggle to survive, he sees there is something else going on. Something dangerous. An insidious disease that gnaws at her mind and drags her deeper into a world of chaos and delusion.
Laika brings to light the often-shrouded world of paranoid schizophrenia. It also examines the socially stigmatized issues of homelessness, addiction, and PTSD, in the hopes of fostering greater awareness and compassion.
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About the Author
Reviews
"Laika is a force from its start, propelling readers through a story that's somehow both tender and unsettling, mysterious and revelatory, intimate and widespread. If you want complex, intriguing characters with a plot that will keep you guessing, trust me: Laika is your next favorite book."
--Anne Corbitt, author of Rules for Lying, winner, Nilsen Prize for First Novel
"Without ever straying from its gripping, lyrical realism, Laika leads us to not only compassion, but also to admiration and hope."
--Joe Benevento, author of Saving Saint Teresa and After
"Kort's second novel keeps the reader close via an unexpected point of view, brilliantly rendered. Laika could be one more tragic runaway if not for Graham who illustrates life's greatest lesson: to be decent human beings, we must care for those who suffer, no matter how damaged we are ourselves."
--Susan Swartwout, author of Odd Beauty, Strange Fruit
"In this brilliantly conceived and executed novel, Kort takes her readers into a distorted world where fear and paranoia overwhelm reality. With compassion, honesty, and startling clarity, she convincingly portrays a terrifying affliction and reminds us that human beings dwell behind numbers and statistics and they deserve to have their stories heard."
--Cynthia A. Graham, author of Beulah's House of Prayer and Beneath Still Waters
"By faithfully representing Laika's illness--by making it real on the page--Kort has crafted an important and sagely empathetic examination of mental illness' all too real human cost. With electric prose, at turns gritty and tender, Laika is a powerful and necessary novel."
--James Brubaker, author of Liner Notes and Pilot Season
