Between the Lines

Mothers and daughters

Before dementia, before her vision deteriorated, my mom was an avid reader of literary fiction. Virginia Woolf was her favorite author, and she enjoyed reading The New Yorker and short story collections. She liked mysteries, too, and was particularly fond of Ruth Rendell, who also wrote under the name Barbara Vine.

When I still lived in San Francisco, I often sent her books, literature providing a neutral and generative ground for conversation. Now she can’t read at all, and though she likes listening to a series of Donna Leon mysteries on CD, I don’t think she necessarily follows the stories as much as she’s soothed by the narrator’s voice.

I’ve been trying to track down a short story whose author I can’t recall, about a woman who goes hiking alone on a desolate trail after fighting with her boyfriend, and when her leg gets caught between two boulders there’s ultimately no hope of escape or rescue. The psychological implications of why this story, as I remember it, holds something of vital importance to my own fiction work is a tale for another time, and while the majority of my books are still in storage, I was sure I’d find it in one of the Annie Proulx collections on my mom’s bookshelves.

Not finding the story there, I began to wonder if it might be by Rick Bass, and remembered his collection For a Little While was one of the last books I’d sent my mom before I wound up moving home to care for her. At that time, back in 2017, I wasn’t aware of how difficult reading had already become for her. And yet, when I opened to the table of contents last night, I could see she’d faithfully read every single story.

---

Another bit of publication news

I had the great pleasure of speaking with Andrea Caswell, Senior Fiction Editor of Cleaver Magazine, about writing “Transported,” and writing flash overall. You can find our conversation HERE in their “Craft Chat” feature.

---