"Half of our family, the better-looking half, is missing," Nomi tells us at the beginning of A Complicated Kindness . Left alone with her sad, peculiar father, her days are spent piecing together why her mother and sister have disappeared and contemplating her inevitable career at Happy Family Farms, a chicken slaughterhouse on the outskirts of East Village-not the East Village in New York City where Nomi would prefer to live, but a dull, oppressive town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of Manitoba, Canada. This moving, darkly funny novel is the world according to Nomi Nickel, a bewildered and wry sixteen-year-old trapped in a town governed by fundamentalist religion. In Nomi's droll, refreshing voice, we're told the story of her eccentric, touching family as it falls apart, each member on a collision course with the only community they have ever known. A work of fierce humor and tragedy by a writer poised to take the American market by storm, this searing, tender, comic testament to family love will break your heart.

米里娅姆·托尤斯（1964—）生于加拿大马尼托巴省斯坦巴赫小镇的一个门诺教家庭，曾获得电影学学士学位和新闻学学士学位，现为加拿大广播公司自由撰稿人。她的第一部小说《幸运的夏日》（1996）获两项大奖，第二部小说《教养不错的孩子》（1998）获麦克纳利·罗宾逊年度图书奖。《复杂的善意》为其第三部小说，2004年版后立刻好评如潮，赢得来自大洋彼岸英国的高度赞誉，《渥太华公民》杂志称它是“当前的一部绝妙小说”。