Category: Fiction

All those Nike trainers. At first, she thought it was a fluke. She was a beachcomber, out in all weathers, and thought she had seen everything the Atlantic could spit out on the shore. The usual flotsam and jetsam were …

“There is a dog,” Dale said, “a big one.” His eyes went to the dash. “Queenie.” Glen nodded. Dale prided himself on remembering names. They were northwest of the Flambeau Ridge where it dropped in three ledges toward the river. …

Although we didn’t know it at the time, we were headed directly toward the dreaded North. No sir, when we five Dunegan kids, trueborn children of the South, climbed aboard Mama’s van, we were under the delusion we were aiming …

It is where we go at the end of a special day, following dinner in Chinatown or an afternoon spent in the dim and spooky light of the museum. We retreat there for an evening walk; ice cream in one …

The wind howled over Grand Traverse Bay that winter evening, tried to make us dead in our tracks. Halfway up the Old Mission Peninsula we parked the car in the woods near Luke’s house, then walked the route he’d plowed …

Again she saw this child. She squinted through the dusty slats of her front window blinds. The boy wore the same tiny laced boots. His toddler jeans misshapen by a bulge in the diapers for which he was now too …

The girl, fourteen, sat at the piano in her pajamas. The wind outside shook the screens in the windows and the snow whirled around and forced its way into other spaces alongside the glass. She flicked on the light above …

The story’s been going around forever, but it always peaks after prelims, and there are whispers in the bookstores and signs on the quad, and the grad students discourse in the bars along Dubuque Street, and the main character is …