Excerpt from Landscape with Invisible Hand by M.T. Anderson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In one of my paintings of my family's house, my father is sitting on the stoop with his head on his knees. It couldn't have been an easy pose, but I just found him that way.

"I can't provide," he said.

I shrugged. "No one can."

"I've been everywhere. No one anywhere has work. I think of those Iranian heart surgeons you used to run into driving cabs in New York. Now there aren't even cabs." We had eaten almost nothing but instant mashed potatoes for a week.

"It's not your fault," I told him, trying to sketch the hairy shanks of shingles.

He looked up at our two cars, his and Mom's, both of them pretty new — his car eager and ready at the drop of a hat to navigate a family trip to San Antonio or even just 18 run out to grab us some charcoal for the grill. "I got those with my discount," said Dad. "I got a great price on them."

"I know you did."

"It made sense for us to have two cars."

"Dad, you'll get another job."

"I knew the inside and outside of that business."

I could tell how much it hurt him to talk about this. I just nodded.

He said, "Do you think I'm not a man, because I can't find work?"

"Dad, that's stupid," I said. "That's just dumb gender stuff."

A year and a half later, I still don't know what it means to "be a man." But I do know what it means to be a coward.

Landscape with Invisible Hand Copyright © 2017 by M.T. Anderson. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.