by Martha Foley
First published 1971
A young American guerrilla fighter returns from Guatemala to New Hampshire. A father searches his son's college room, trying to understand his path to violence. A truck driver on speed encounters innocent hitchhikers. A boy slides into psychotic depression while a girl faces her older friend's death. These twenty stories capture American experience across the spectrum of human crisis and connection. Russell Banks writes of revolution's aftermath. Wright Morris explores a child accepting family strangeness. Tillie Olsen traces mental collapse. David Madden examines parental anguish. Hal Bennett probes black and white relationships in the South. James Blake reveals prison power dynamics. Each story confronts characters at moments of transformation, whether through love, loss, violence, or simple growing up. The collection draws from 118 American magazines, representing both established and emerging voices in short fiction.
Genres: short-stories, anthologies, american-fiction, 20th-century, american
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Guatemala, New Hampshire
Period: 1971
382 pages · Hardcover · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Content warnings: mental-illness, violence