Literary Fiction, Family Fiction
Date Published: October 13, 2026
Michael also struggles with a mother suffering from dementia, who insists he is the grown-up version of a brother who died in infancy. When the Kafkaesque Bureau of Preschool Special Education threatens to make their son repeat kindergarten, the family must confront how they are living and decide which therapies—everything from Mel Finkelstein’s sensory reintegration sessions to pediatric neurologist visits—are worth the emotional toll.
“Everyone should read this miracle of a book. Carol LaHines is a fearless writer. With brutal honesty, laugh-aloud-humor, faultless dialogue, understanding, and ultimately with great empathy and compassion, she portrays all our misguided efforts to control our bodies, our children, and our lives.” —Sheila Kohler, author of award-winning novels including Bluebird, Cracks, and Becoming Jane Eyre
About the Author
Carol LaHines’ debut novel, Someday Everything Will All Make Sense, was a finalist for the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and an American Fiction Award. Her second novel, The Vixen Amber Halloway (Regal House 2024) was a gold medal winner in the Foreword Indies awards, a finalist for an American Fiction Award and the Pencraft Award, and a Shelf Unbound notable indie, and was featured on NPR and C-SPAN. Her fiction has appeared in literary journals including Fence, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, The Literary Review, The Laurel Review, North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review, The South Carolina Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Sycamore Review, Permafrost, redivider, Literary Orphans, and Literal Latte. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of the Lamar York Prize for Fiction. Her short stories and novellas have also been finalists for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction from Sarabande Books, the David Nathan Meyerson fiction prize, the New Letters short story award, and the Disquiet Literary Prize, among others.
Ms. LaHines’ eldest son Dylan was born with Pierre-Robin sequence. His condition, which can lead to breathing obstruction and is potentially fatal, went undiagnosed and was compounded by other egregious medical errors, as a result of which Dylan was medically challenged and severely disabled, at least as defined by society. Having navigated these labyrinthine, Kafka-esque corridors herself, she was moved to write this book as a testament to him and all the other families like hers who have coped with an indifferent medical bureaucracy. Miracle Grow is also laced with the satire, acerbic commentary, absurdist subplots, and the tragic-comic sensibility Ms. LaHines is known for.
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Trouble is brewing at Whitman’s Port Choral Society as choir members drop dead and Detective Jonathan Storm raises more questions than answers in his investigation. When Stefan, the choir’s soloist, gets weaker by the day, Meg and her friends take matters into their own hands. And if a murder investigation was not enough to elevate anyone’s blood pressure, Meg finds herself in danger tied to her past that she’s struggling to understand.
