Jon Pineda

“An inventive and powerful coming of age story about the search for community and all the ways our ties to one another come undone. Jon Pineda has a poet’s eye for the details of this vivid, haunting landscape, and he brings it blazingly to life.” —Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation With the cinematic and terrifying beauty of the American South humming behind each line, Jon Pineda’s Let’s No One Get Hurt is a coming-of-age story set equally between real-world issues of race and socioeconomics, and a magical, Huck Finn-esque universe of community and exploration. Fifteen-year-old Pearl is squatting in an abandoned boathouse with her father, a disgraced college professor, and two other grown men, deep in the swamps of the American South. All four live on the fringe, scavenging what they can—catfish, lumber, scraps for their ailing dog. Despite the isolation, Pearl feels at home with her makeshift family: the three men care for Pearl and teach her what they know of the world. Mason Boyd, aka “Main Boy,” is from a nearby affluent neighborhood where he and his raucous friends ride around in tricked-out golf carts, shoot their fathers’ shotguns, and aspire to make Internet pranking videos. While Pearl is out scavenging in the woods, she meets Main Boy, who eventually reveals that his father has purchased the property on which Pearl and the others are squatting. With all the power in Main Boy’s hands, a very unbalanced relationship forms between the two kids, culminating in a devastating scene of violence and humiliation.

A Novel

Let's No One Get Hurt

The translator's diary

a novel

Apology

An immigrant takes the blame for his nephew’s mistake, changing both of their lives, in this “acutely observed” novel by a prize-winning author (Publishers Weekly). When nine-year-old Tom Serafino’s twin sister Teagan suffers a debilitating brain injury at a Virginia construction site, a police investigation implicates his playmate Mario’s uncle—an immigrant transient worker known as Shoe. Innocent of the crime but burdened by his own childhood tragedy, Shoe takes the blame for what is in fact an accident caused by his young nephew, ensuring Mario’s chance at a future publicly unscarred. The lines between innocence and guilt, evasions and half-truths, love and duty are blurred. Can a lie born from resignation, fear, and love transform tragedy into hope? And is the life of one man worth the price of that lie? Apology explores how the decisions we make in an instant reverberate in the years to come, and paints a portrait of sacrifice within two immigrant families raising first-generation Americans. It explores the measure of duty we have toward one another, and the extent to which abandoning the wreckage of family and the past often leads to unexpected consequences. “Apology is a page-turner of ideas, and it shows us how our actions spin out in crazy directions, marbles that roll under our lives’ furniture and come out in the most surprising times. I loved it.” —Darin Strauss, author of The Queen of Tuesday

Jon Pineda

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