First published 2012
An aging English professor grieves his dead wife by breaking into strangers' homes. He doesn't want their valuables. He takes their sentimental objects, the small things that make a house feel like home. Meanwhile, a young woman's house burns down and she wins a ham in a contest but refuses to collect it. She asks the grocery manager why her ham should be punished. A failed writer moves into a convent basement and stumbles onto the nuns' hidden lives. A girl desperate to stop her brother from joining the army brings Bob Dylan home for Thanksgiving dinner. Emily sits across from the idea of her ex-boyfriend Marcel at a restaurant while somewhere else Marcel dines with his idea of Emily. These people wander through rooms both real and imagined, chasing some version of the American dream that stays just out of reach. They discover that homes don't always shelter and that we often love our ideas of people more than the people themselves.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: America
Period: 21st-century
164 pages · Paperback · University Of Iowa Press