Malia Simon

Both Hands for Me Malia Simon

Both Hands for Me is a philosophically rich story of a young woman who becomes indebted to her dead father to carry out a suicide mission. Protagonist Taissa is dedicated to carrying on her father's theory of the end of the world after he commits suicide, planning to follow his orders to end her life as soon as one person believes her. She decides to live with the homeless in attempt to find that one person. She latches on to a young, armless, bug-eyed boy named Dragonfly as the prospect for conversion, yet he seems to see her more intensely than anyone ever has. Together they travel from an encampment on the beach to the streets of Hollywood until each is forced to make a crucial decision about the other. The prevailing theme of the novel becomes the question of who will thrive and who will die between the physically crippled young man, the psychologically crippled young woman, and the relationship between the two.