When a child is separated from his mother, what is left to him to tell her how much he loves her?

The city was breaking. The streets were no longer safe. The rooms were small and warm and full of fear. The adults listened before they spoke. Doors closed softly. Bread was counted. Windows were covered. The morning was not trusted.

Adam was six years old.

He still had a bottle cap he called a boat. He still believed there would be water somewhere. He still believed the sea was a place a boy could reach.

Little Shoes and Other Small Things is a quiet and heartbreaking novel about a child in war, a mother’s love, and the small things that remain when the world has taken too much.

It is about a pair of shoes.

A bottle-cap boat.

A room before morning.

And the things no one can say to a child until it is already too late. It is a about childhood, war, and the quiet ways love survives when almost everything else is taken.