The novel you are writing is set on the island of Grosse Ile, which is nestled on the Detroit River at the mouth of Lake Erie, between Michigan and Canada. The island is slightly more than nine square miles in area.

When Cain spoke to his brother Abel in the field, of what did he speak? Did he speak of the fruit that he had brought forth from the ground and then offered to the Lord? Did he speak of its bountifulness, its succulence? Did he speak, too, of his brother’s own offering, the firstlings and…

My grandmother returns from the dead on Tuesdays. Not every Tuesday—I’m not that lucky—but often enough that I’ve learned to bake her shortbread cookies on Monday nights, just in case. She materializes at 10:17 a.m., wearing the blue dress she was buried in, smelling of cloves and the embalming fluid that Mr. Henshaw at Eternal…

I woke up to my roommate Gary shouting, “Fire in the hole!” I opened my eyes just as he tossed  one of last night’s Busch Light cans like a hand grenade. The empty can ricocheted off the window above my bed before smacking me in the forehead. Gary retrieved another crumpled can from his sweatpants…

See this old house atop the steep, steep hill? This is where I lived when I ran away from you, when I was long-haired and vixen-minded.  I haven’t changed.  This is where I mowed the lawn, the only one of the six roommates who had ever mowed a lawn before. You taught me how, when…

If they don’t stop growing up so fast, I will be forced to freeze time. For everyone else, the world will stop and it will be 11:42 on Sunday morning. Mrs. Sorrento will forever be gliding back into her driveway after returning from Mass. Her son will be leaning out of the rear window, shouting…

Dear Mr. Roth, Thank you for your recent submission of the manuscript The Flamingo of Cape Cod. While we are not accepting it for publication, we do endeavor whenever possible to provide feedback to aspiring authors of children’s books such as yourself. The inspiration for the book—the first ever sighting, in the summer of 2024,…

Once when I was young, I read a story in the newspaper. A man had gone on a picnic with his wife and children. They spent the day by the lake playing in the water, throwing a football, and doing all the typical things that families do. At the lake the man and his wife…

I. On the other side of the road, on a bench facing the ocean, she looked up from the book she was reading just in time to see them lift the body from the marsh where it had been stashed like dirty laundry, wrapped in a red-checkered cloth that looked like a picnic blanket, the…

Harlow met Stevie while watching an otter in light-wash jeans and a leather chest harness snort poppers. There was an anticipation of what was next or who was next; always going to the next and then the next and then gone.

Along the path. Through the forest. Uphill. Downhill. Autumn, winter, spring. In all weathers. Running. Always running. Last night was bitterly cold, and this morning – school. The grown-ups say it’s only four kilometres to school, but they never walk us there. Only rarely, on the coldest days, if there happens to be a free…

When Teresa confessed to Pastor John that she was pregnant, he proclaimed it immaculate, called her up to the altar on Sunday so that the congregation could bask in the glow of her blessing, her blonde hair tinged red in the light filtering through the stained glass window behind her, her belly just starting to…