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Reading Festival: Mitra De Souza's The Fragile

discovery showcase samples for the 2025 reading fest

Mitra De Souza

Mitra De Souza

Mitra has loved to write for as long as she can remember. In elementary school, she used to tape her short stories to the back of her chair for her classmates to read. She is drawn to stories that encourage people to view the world from a new perspective. When she lived in Trinidad and Tobago, she authored a series of children’s books published by a local NGO to foster empathy and promote animal welfare. She currently resides in San Diego with her husband, two kids and two big rescue dogs who think they’re still puppies. When she isn’t writing, she loves walking on the beach, laughing uncontrollably with her kids, and continuing her quest to find the perfect mango.

Read more about the author through Mitra De Souza's Official website

The Fragile

The Fragile book

Seventeen-year-old Maya is a Fragile-someone deemed too weak to function in society -and has spent the last decade institutionalized at the Academy for the Rehabilitation of Children. Maya wants nothing more than to be cured of her neurotic hypersensitivity which causes her to experience the pain and emotions of others. Instead, she begins to have vivid nightmares where she connects with a young girl's trauma, leading her to uncover a plot to destroy the empathy centers in children's brains. Desperate to escape the girl's pain, Maya learns she can transfer feelings into people with her hands when she accidentally hurts her best friend, Jacob. Lacking faith in her new ability, Maya must choose between fighting a man bent on destroying everyone like her, and finally being free from the burden of empathy. In doing so, she might discover that she's not so fragile after all.

Access this book through our Overdrive collection:  The Fragile

Themes Within the Book