What You Can See from Here

In this international bestseller, a grandmother's prophetic dream sends a small German town into an introspective tailspin as they grapple with love, loss, and the absurdities of life.
On a beautiful spring day, a small village wakes up to an omen: Selma has dreamed of an okapi. Someone is about to die.
Luisa, Selma's ten-year-old granddaughter, looks on as the predictable characters of her small world begin acting strangely. Though they claim not to be superstitious, each of her neighbors newly grapples with buried secrets and deferred decisions that have become urgent in the face of death.
Luisa's mother struggles to decide whether to end her marriage. An old family friend, known only as the optician, tries to find the courage to tell Selma he loves her. Only sad Marlies remains unchanged, still moping around her house and cooking terrible food. But when the prophesied death finally comes, the circumstances fall outside anyone's expectations. The loss forever changes Luisa and shapes her for years to come, as she encounters life's great questions alongside her devoted friends, young and old.
What You Can See from Here by award-winning novelist Mariana Leky is a moving tale of grief, first love, reluctant love, late love, and finding one's place in the world, even if that place is right where you started. This charming novel offers a bittersweet portrait of small towns and the wider world that beckons beyond, while delivering a thoughtful meditation on the way loss and love shape not just a person but a community.