In 2015, after an outwardly uneventful pregnancy, Megan Nix's second daughter, Anna, was born terribly small and failed her newborn hearing test. Megan and her husband learned that Anna is completely deaf and could have lifelong delays due to an infection in the womb with cytomegalovirus, or CMV, a disease Megan unknowingly contracted from her toddler during pregnancy. Remedies for Sorrow is lyrically written and a searing critique of the paternalistic...

Luc, a youth born with one ear and raised by a drunken father in fifteenth-century France, finds a better home with fisherman Pons, his sister Mattie, and their ward Beatrice, the daughter of a disgraced knight, and even after being kidnapped and sold into slavery in Africa, he remains remarkably fortunate.