by Leni Zumas
First published 2011
A teenage boy brings home a new friend, only to witness his blind mother making advances toward the visitor. In another corner of this shadowy America, a factory worker returns each evening to nurse injured animals back to health. An aspiring witch confronts her own spiritual failures. A girl escapes her microscopic hometown with traveling musicians, desperately trying to map her route home. These characters exist at the edge of collapse, inhabiting a country that feels both familiar and strange. Each story follows people who struggle to connect with others while barely holding themselves together. Zumas places her characters in situations where survival requires more than they think they can give. The collection reveals how people adapt when their circumstances push them beyond their limits. These are stories about the space between wanting something and getting it, between the life you planned and the one you actually live.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: America
Period: 21st-century
224 pages · Kindle Edition · Grove Press, Open City Books
Content warnings: mental-illness