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A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection

Twenty-three years old, alone, broke, and without options, a young woman returns to her mother’s home. There, while the television drones and her mother laments the aging of Walter Cronkite, Hubert Humphrey, and her own body, the young woman has endless hours to relive her life with her high school boyfriend. When a former lover and Vietnam medic Daniel comes to visit her, it will be the first time a man has entered the home in a very long time.  

Jayne Anne Phillips captures the quiet, searing awkwardness between a mother and daughter, scarred by their past relationships, memories of lost intimacy, and conversations they could never share. A classic of the genre, “Home” and the other stories comprising Black Tickets were pronounced “unlike any in our literature...a crooked beauty” by Raymond Carver.

An ebook short.