A Complicated Kindness

What’s a teenaged rebel to do in a smug Mennonite community? If you’re 16-year-old Nomi Nickel — drive aimlessly around the countryside with your pot-smoking boyfriend. Rage against fate and a runaway mother for deserting you in the wrong “East Village.” And put off finishing that English assignment as long as your oddly attentive teacher will let you. Wise, edgy, and wickedly funny, Nomi has wooed thousands of readers with her bittersweet tale of adolescent angst — Mennonite-style — since A Complicated Kindness began climbing North American bestseller lists, appeared in People and O Magazine, and won Canada’s 2004 Governor General’s Award for Fiction. In her droll, refreshing voice, Nomi tells 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.