Testimony, confession, a child's outpouring: this is a painfully matter-of-fact account of how Colin and his older sister, Mariela, killed the man who tyrannized them and their piously pathetic mother, who is now a blank. As he describes their flight from the slum in Haiti to an uncertain somewhere called far away, Colin conjures a bleak picture of the life he and his sister are trying to leave behind.

Set in locales from Miami and Port-auPrince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, here are eight emotionally absorbing stories, rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity. At once wide in scope and intimate, Everything Inside explores with quiet power and elegance the forces that pull us together or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.