Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
First Fiction
2002 Mary and O'Neil by Justin Cronin
Mary and O'Neil--each with a difficult, haunted past--meet, fall in love, marry, and raise a family. They are seemingly ordinary people who live seemingly ordinary lives, but who manage to make peace with their painful histories by learning to love each other and build a world together. Their simple story is told in a series of eight related tales.