We live in a strange, weird country (obviously). We don’t see, or want to see, what’s directly in front of us. Why bother when we have phones? Oregon author Peter Nathaniel Malae has been chronicling the untold stories of class and race, and familiar, timeless tales of family and heartache, since the publication of his first novel in 2010, What We Are, which depicts a young Samoan-American drifting through conflicts about immigration, identity and meaning. (As his protagonist muses, “I can find beauty in the gutter, as long as it’s empty of another heartbeat.’’) The former Steinbeck and MacDowell Colony fellow made […]