Steacey Levine's new novel recounts a pivotal day in the fraught relationship of two orphaned sisters through the eyes of their obsessively observant housekeeper. Will Jody be able to cope if her younger sibling Mice, subject to constant harassment in their community for her unusual appearance and habits, leaves home? How will the all-watching Girtle convey her fierce attachment to them both? When they cross paths with an unsettling stranger at a neighborhood party, the three women are driven toward momentous changes. Set in southern Florida at the peak of Cold War hysteria, Mice 1961 is a powerful meditation on belonging and separateness, conformity and otherness.
