First published 2014
A young scholar grieves his wife's sudden death by stripping away his landlord's possessions from the Maine rental they planned to share. A grocery store manager obsesses over a missing woman and her abandoned teenage son. Years later, a documentary filmmaker receives an unwelcome visit from his first subject, whose trust he once violated. A family flees to Paris for the summer, but their teenage daughter's dangerous choices transform their lives in ways they never anticipated. McCracken explores how people navigate the thin boundary between connection and isolation. Her characters discover unexpected moments of grace amid their losses: conversations with children, a gift of a badly accented parrot. These nine stories reveal how heartbreak mingles with sudden joy, showing us the strange wonder of staying alive when everything familiar falls away.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unexpected-grace
Setting: Maine, Paris
Period: contemporary
241 pages · Kindle Edition · The Dial Press