The Beauty of Their Youth
The five short stories in this collection question the reliability of memory, how our history impinges on our present, or what risks are worth taking, but each captures moments in people’s lives when they are vulnerable:
- a young woman is swept up in her troubled sister-in-law’s effort to escape an abusive marriage;
- a middle-aged woman comes to a place of peace after her mother’s passing by finally asking a question she’d never had the courage to voice, of a friend she had never fully acknowledged;
- a German visitor overstays her welcome in Florida and risks her freedom to feel connected;
- a painter pushes himself to depict the raw, real truth in an age of absurdism and lies;
- and a mother seeking a stronger connection to her adult daughter finds it by understanding another’s deepest loss.
