The Letters

Award-winning, internationally acclaimed writer Andrew Porter returns to the short story form in this masterful and elegiac new collection.

“Porter has quietly become one of the United States’ most reliably great fiction writers.” —NPR

Enter the world of San Antonio, Texas. All of these gorgeously contemplative stories are set there, in an eclectic neighborhood lined with old historic houses, coffee shops, and bars, where writers and artists, filmmakers and musicians gather. Each narrative reveals a shimmering new facet of the place, and introduces us to individuals on the precipice of change. Here is a sister about to head off to college, a child forced to grow up too soon, a mother falling ill, friends scattering to the suburbs.

Full of tension, emotion, insight, and nostalgia, these stories explore the mysterious, sometimes contradictory ways we communicate—or miscommunicate—with one another, how our lives evolve and deepen. Following in the footsteps of his exquisite previous collections, The Letters is work from a writer at the height of his powers, at once piercingly intimate and profoundly universal.