The Widower and other Short Stories

Debra Milligan presents a quintet of short stories about love and growth, the catalysts for life that translate well into fiction. Each story is set in a different era, with conflicts and resolutions that transcend time.

The Widower is Gerhardt Schildt, a man who must learn to love, after the death of his wife. His life, literally, depends on it.

Set in the early 1900s in Philadelphia, this story will bring tears to your eyes as it brings justice to the heart of a man who has yet to truly love the woman he’d once called his wife.

The Widower is a moment in time that will change time forever for Gerhardt Schildt.

Sound of Goodbye reveals the ending of a love that never began. A girl becomes a woman in the leaving of a boy who never became a man. Set in New England in 1962, this tale speaks of a time when a woman had fewer choices in life. This young woman, inevitably, makes hers wisely, and moves toward a life of independence.

Rainy Dreams tells the improbable love of two people who meet by chance: a divorced woman wounded by love and a single younger man who tends to love like a garden. A bit of a 1990’s tale, this short story finds love in an unusual place, and in a mocking way. That way teaches a teacher new respect for the architecture of romance and roses — and how dreams of love can become rainy dreams.

You can’t run from love, but that didn’t stop the young woman in The Highway from trying. The young man who seeks her heart has his own way of sending a message to her, one that she won’t tear up and throw away.

The Highway is about the road that led away from love and the road that led back to it.

The Christmas Lunch sets the table for friendship between two young women. One female has found true love after betrayal; the other female has to find the courage to risk betrayal in order to know the meaning of true love.