Silent Girl takes you into the remarkable lives of characters inspired by Pericles, The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, Hamlet, The Tempest, and Coriolanus. Set in Canada, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand, and the United States, eight stories pursue trajectories unimagined by Shakespeare: a child is sold to traffickers after losing her mother in the 2004 tsunami; the dreams of an ambitious, student in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan are taken hostage; a young woman devises a desperate plan to help her tortured husband after he returns from Vietnam; two women and an older man discover the fluid boundaries of gender; a woman constructs a life on remembered pain after her husband disappears with their baby daughter; a young widow and her son wrestle for control of their Alberta farm; an eleven-year-old stumbles across incest and her own emerging sexuality; and a genetically-rare oppressed people struggle with an environmentally ravaged world.

EXCERPT

From "Nobody: I Myself"

I am not a victim. You're not to feel sorry for me.

Feel sorry for Joe, whoever you are; speak out for him, please.

I try to stay on my side of the bed but sometimes I drift and his hands find my neck and squeeze it so hard I nearly swallow my tongue. His eyes are full of such fear and loathing you'd think I'm the enemy come clear across the world to take him out. He's sorry when he comes to, hates himself for the bruises he leaves.

Nearly six months since he returned but the nightmares don't quit. Ever try getting through to the VA? A waste of time. If he'd come back with no legs, they'd have him in rehab. He'd flip if he knew I made those calls.

Our only friend these days is Brother Darnell as he calls himself; no help at all. I call him Brother D because it ticks him off.

He was over again last night, cranking the ancient bell - brang, brang, schmoozing our landlady, Mrs. Will. I can't hear what he says but I feel the smarm in his words. Slow as a cellar snake in winter, he climbs the warped, wooden stairs to the rooms we rent, scraping his shoes, driving me crazy with the urge to nail the swollen door shut. He no longer knocks. Says, hey, brother, how you feeling, before taking over the sagging horsehair couch, making points like a preacher, as if what he has to say can save Joe from the shivering sweats. I'm supposed to disappear when he arrives, hover in the kitchen in case their cups need filling.

Joe's on the new G.I. Bill, hundred bucks a month for going to school, taking mechanical drawing because, as he says, ha ha, there are way more jobs doing that than bayonet-sharpening. It bothers me that he lets Brother D take up so much of his time; he could blow this chance to get out, to be somebody.