by Eric Puchner
First published 2017
A young boy watches his mother carefully, wondering if she might actually be a robot. His fear captures something unsettling about the distance that can open between parents and children. Across these interconnected stories, Eric Puchner explores families caught in moments of crisis and confusion. A woman struggling with severe depression must shepherd her niece and nephew through Halloween night. A new father carries his infant to a party where cocaine flows freely. A teenager desperately tries to save his estranged father's dogs from euthanasia. The settings shift from youth arts camps to aging punk rock tours, from independent bookstores fighting to survive to imagined futures where parents have vanished entirely. Each story reveals how family bonds stretch and sometimes snap under pressure. These characters navigate the strange territory between love and obligation, between the people they thought they knew and the strangers those people sometimes become. The collection maps the complicated geography of domestic life, where the familiar can suddenly turn foreign.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, parent-child-conflict
240 pages · Hardcover · Scribner
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness