First published 2025
A writer watches her friend cycle through failure and sudden success, realizing this drama might provide the raw material for her own work. She faces a choice between loyalty and artistic ambition. In another story, a painting hidden in a bowling alley reveals the gap between observer and observed. A mother traces her family's journey from her own childhood through her son's emergence into adulthood, weaving together beauty and survival. A woman catalogs the many states where she and her husband have lived, searching for something neither can name. These narrators see too much, want too much, and wrestle with relationships that give and withhold in equal measure. Set between Southern California and Virginia, the stories examine the bonds between mothers and children, the destructive impulses of young women, and the complex territory of friendship.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: contemplative, intimate, introspective, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, interconnected-stories, internal-conflict, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Southern California, Virginia
192 pages · Paperback · Graywolf Press