Symmetry

Symmetry revolves around Luca Ginepro, an 18-year-old soldier who is wounded in Afghanistan and returns home to Massachusetts with PTSD, and Kathyrn Durant, an aspiring med-student making ends meet as a masseuse who is savagely raped one night in her studio. The ways these two narratives intertwine shape the emotional heft of the novel. Katherine's and Luca's struggles to make sense of their injuries illustrate how, to borrow a phrase from Dr. Judith Herman, "the traumas of one are the traumas of the other."