What Went Missing and What Got Found — Fatima Shaik

Set in a deep-rooted community, the book describes the inner lives of outsiders with humor and tenderness. There are religious zealots, day-dreaming musicians, failed romantics, and more a mute woman who believes that the photos of starving children in the newspaper are speaking to her, a man who mourns the loss of his true love while being accused of her murder, and an old couple who spends their last night together as flood waters rise around their bed.

The Short Story Review wrote about Shaik s previous adult book, The Mayor of New Orleans: Just Talking Jazz, The trio of novellas is set in and around New Orleans where the mixed-race Creoles speak their own dialect...Shaik writes with empathy and compassion about the lower rungs of New Orleans society. There are no villains here, nor is there the damp-palm voyeurism we have seen in other New Orleans-set stories. National Public Radio called her book a terrific, charging solo. Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, and the San Francisco Chronicle also praised the collection.

Xavier University of Louisiana through its imprints -- the Xavier University Press, the Xavier Review and the Xavier Review Press -- began publishing in 1937 and has featured Ernest Gaines, Walker Percy, Andre Dubus, James Lee Burke, Nancy Lemann and others.

What Went Missing and What Got Found adds to the rich diversity of voices in contemporary fiction and to our understanding of Southern literature.