Ariel Gore participates in a marriage equality demonstration as she struggles for footing in her divorce. Trish Bendix receives a painful reminder that legal recognition of gay marriage is only one step toward societal recognition of her own marriage. Emanuel Xavier pays tribute to heroes of the LGBTQ community who didn’t live to enjoy the benefits of their activism.
This flash fiction anthology examines the experiences of being a transplant in a foreign land and looks critically at what it means to forsake tongues, traditions, and comforts in the hope of starting a new life in another world. These stories push readers to expand their understanding of the world beyond their own front doors.
Ed Garrison has it all—a successful basketball career, a great relationship with his kid brother, the best dog a guy could ask for, and a supportive family. With summer vacation being the only thing standing between him and a full-ride scholarship to Berkeley, Ed feels invincible.
Isaac knew Heritage Camp would be different this year: he was different. While he had accepted who he was, he wasn’t sure how his peers would feel. What he didn’t expect was having to investigate the sudden death of his camp counselor.
Fifteen-year-old Laurel Summers couldn’t tell you the last words she spoke to her mother and siblings if her life depended on it. But she will never forget the image of her mother’s mangled green car on the freeway, shattering the boring world Laurel had been so desperate to escape. Now she can’t stop seeing the ghosts of her family members, which haunt her with memories of how life used to be back when her biggest problem was the kiss she shared with her best friend Hanna.
Never leave someone behind: it’s a promise easier made than kept, especially when seventeen-year-old Pip takes the headstrong twelve-year-old Iris under her protection in the wake of an earth-shattering plague. After an unspeakable tragedy, the duo must negotiate the complexities of their own identities amid the nearly unrecognizable remains of Spokane, Washington.
Claire Stanfield became a lawyer to make her father proud, but after a troubling case leaves her shaken, she escapes to Alaska and immerses herself in the world of dog sledding. Dillon Cord became a police officer to serve his community, but he moves to Nome in the wake of a life-altering incident. For both, the Iditarod—the toughest sled dog race in the world—offers a chance for forgiveness, redemption, and healing.
Sixteen-year-old Mattie Rollins has her life all figured out. She’ll ace her high school classes, earn a college scholarship, and create a new life for herself and her family. But Mattie’s brilliant plans begin to crumble when her family is forced to move into their beat-up station wagon, Ruby. Then, her mother mysteriously disappears.
Meri Miller lives in Soldotna, Alaska. Never heard of it? That’s because in Slowdotna the most riveting activities for a teenager are salmon fishing and grabbing a Big Gulp at the local 7-Eleven. More than anything, Meri wants to hop in her VW Bug and head somewhere exciting, like New York or L.A. or any city where going to the theater doesn’t only mean the movies. Everything is so scripted here–don’t have too much fun, date this guy because he’s older and popular, stay put because that’s what everyone else does.
It’s 1960. In a small logging town called Calamus that’s about as far in the middle of nowhere as you can get, Wade Curren, star of the high school baseball and football teams, is content living out his role of local hero, holding court in the corner booth of the town diner where his girlfriend Lorna waits tables.
A widower searching for solace in competitive eating. A mother and daughter preparing their living room for the rapture. A young couple looking for reasons to reconnect on a trip to the mountains. A grieving sister and her alcoholic brother sharing a home for the first time since childhood. Siblings and Other Disappointments follows an array of characters searching for comfort—in parents and children, in brothers and sisters, in strangers and friends. Scattered throughout the Pacific Northwest, its twelve stories are stories of place, as stark and infinitely complex as the landscape itself. Author Kait Heacock’s debut collection is an examination of relationships and isolation within working-class families and a tribute to the little victories and traumas of everyday life.
It’s been a year since the Big One―the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake―devastated Portland. While Meryem Zarfati’s injuries have healed and her neighborhood is rebuilding, her mother is still missing. Refusing to give up hope, Meryem continues to search for her mother, even as she learns to live without her in a changed Portland. Along the way, she struggles with her Jewish-Vietnamese heritage and what it means to honor her ancestry. After she receives a magical prayer shawl handed down from her maternal grandmother, a mysterious stranger appears and Meryem is called to save a young girl living in slavery―in sixteenth-century Istanbul. The third companion in the Oregon Book Award–winning Blue Thread series explores how we recover―and rebuild―after the worst has happened.
After the devastating loss of her father on a canoe trip meant to bring them closer together, fifteen-year-old Emma Wilson finds herself alone on the river. As she treks out from their remote campsite, she faces wild rapids and a numbing sense of guilt. Back home, Emma confronts the complexity of grief and realizes that leaving the river behind was only the first step forward.
Triinu Hoffman has to face cruelties like this every day. Shy, intellectual, and living in a rural town, she just doesn’t fit in. She does her best to hide behind her dyed hair and black wardrobe, but it’s still hard to ignore the bullying of Pip Weston and Principal Pinn. It’s even harder to ignore the allure of other girls.
Utopia—we all want our own, but who pays for it and at what price? Croatian poet Dubravka Oraić Tolić’s delivers a masterful, thought-provoking answer with exquisite language and imagery in the epic poem American Scream. As Columbus’s dream of reaching India was interrupted by the discovery of a new land, we too discover unexpected lands in pursuit of our dreams. Complementing American Scream is Palindrome Apocalypse—a palindrome that is artful in both technique and story—presented side-by-side with the Croatian original to preserve its visual effect. Together, Oraić Tolić’ poems:
Easter weekend, 1955, and Abraham Lincoln finds himself in Evanston, Illinois, mysteriously transported from 1865 at the height of the Civil War. Ninety years after his assassination, this wry, gaunt man, briefly relieved of the burdens of life in his own time, encounters a future society, idealized images of himself, reminiscences of friends and acquaintances long dead, and rare understanding from a woman very different from Mary Todd, his troubled wife. He returns to our nation’s highest office and the bloody conflicts of the War Between the States, a man restored by his experience of the future and determined—as ever—to preserve the Union. Writer and scholar Tony Wolk has been fascinated by Lincoln, “the essence of a good man,” for four decades. In this novel, Wolk skillfully blends history, fantasy, and the writer’s craft to bring Abraham Lincoln to life—Lincoln the man of flesh and blood as well as Lincoln the President. Readers emerge from a mesmerizing read with the sense of having been in Lincoln’s head and in his skin. Henceforth, references to Abraham Lincoln have a personal resonance: “The Father of Us All” is no longer a stranger.
