We're in Trouble
Stories
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
Short fiction about love in the face of mortal threats, in a prize-winning collection by the author of You Came Back.
In this extraordinary collection of short fiction, characters wrestle with the moments in life that test us most deeply, in ways both dramatic and subtle. In “We’re in Trouble,” a woman is asked to end her dying husband’s suffering. In “Abandon,” a troubled young man must risk jail to do right by the only woman he has ever loved. And “In the Event” shows a young musician’s all-night vigil after he loses his best friends and is suddenly left as the guardian of their three-year-old son.
From a wife waiting for news of her husband’s latest death-defying climb to a sheriff thrown into turmoil after his close friend enacts a horrifying murder-suicide, this “uncanny, clear-eyed [and] wildly engaging” story collection was awarded the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize (Entertainment Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his striking debut collection, Coake considers how character is revealed under pressure. The title story is a stunner, a series of three vignettes in which a young man recalls a tragic accident, two lovers witness a death and a married couple grapple with the husband's terminal cancer. A misfit couple breaks into an Upper Peninsula cabin, but find themselves trapped in a blizzard in "Abandon." In "Cross Country," a man estranged from his wife takes their young son on a road trip; several shifts in point of view from father, to son, to an outside observer throw the dynamics of their relationship into question and blur the lines between love and menace. The story concludes with an ambiguous gesture made with protective intent: "He tightens his grip on the wheel, and concentrates instead on what he knows: the flat horizon stretched out ahead. The soft warmth of the boy's neck. His hand resting on it. The way his fingers curl, to fit its shape." "A Single Awe" introduces Dana, a married woman tormented by adulterous thoughts. Her husband is a good but dull man, and the selfless act of heroism that won her love also revealed her own limitations. With unadorned but dramatic, economical prose, Coake explores the human capacity for altruism and cowardice in these high-stakes tales.
