Excerpt from Idaho by Emily Ruskovich, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

But the day he pushed her into the box of clothes was something very different; it was the only time his disease manifested itself in violence, violence so far removed from the man he was that Ann couldn't fathom such a thing happening even in the moments that immediately followed.

But after it happened once, it happened again. A few months later, he pushed her against the refrigerator, so that her cheek pressed against a coupon she'd hung there, for a diner called Panhandler Pies. She fought him, but just like the first time, fighting only hurt her more. When he let her go, she pushed him away from her and screamed at him, but he just stood there sadly, as if disappointed in her.

Another day, not too long after that, Ann poured a bucket of pinecones onto the kitchen table. She intended to decorate them with peanut butter and birdseed, to hang on the tree limbs for the finches. But as soon as she sat down to work, she felt his hand on her head, and he pushed her down into the pinecones.

The pinecones left a rash of tiny cuts on her left cheek.

Later still, the wind blew open the door of one of his daughters' old rooms. He thought it was Ann who had opened it. He pressed her forehead against the door once it was closed again, and told her, "No, no, no," until she said, in her fear and shock, "Okay."

She did not understand these things, but knew that Wade didn't understand them, either, and so she found no way to express her anger. No way to stop these episodes from happening again. The pain and the shock of them wore off the more they happened, and she began to bear the assaults because she didn't know what else she could do. She took note of what provoked him, and made sure never to do those things again. No more pinecones, no Panhandler Pies, no boxes of old clothes, no going in his daughters' rooms. Simple enough. These things were a kind of collection she began to keep, a list she would run down in her mind, eventually not out of pain anymore but out of wonder, as if something were right there on the edge of her life, waiting for her to discover it. At night, when he was asleep, she thought about these things as she studied the face she loved. His pale eyelids stark on his sun-­roughed face. His lips chapped, his cheeks unshaven. Such inherent kindness in his body that it was impossible to picture this man doing the things he had certainly done. She touched her lips to his thick hair, and she closed her eyes, too.

Excerpted from Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. Copyright © 2017 by Emily Ruskovich. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.