Set against the backdrop of the Deep South, these nine haunting stories explore big themes–authenticity, the relinquishing of childhood, the acceptance of dreams lost–in a way that ultimately affirms the act of living and the value of human relationships. In “Giving Up the Ghost,” a man sits beside a fatal car wreck to share the last moments of a stranger’s life. In “Witnessing,” a young woman befriends her lover’s ailing wife. In “Rapture,” a housewife’s unexpected romantic encounter during a tornado rocks her tidy suburban existence.

How do we become who we are? And what makes us love one another? With empathy, wit, and beautiful language, Davis blends the real and the imagined to create a kaleidoscope of the human heart.

Praise for Our Former Lives in Art

“Davis creates magnificently conflicted characters with low key stylistic panache.”

–Publishers Weekly

“Davis shares with other southern female short-story writers, such as Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty, a sense of relish of the absurdity running through the human condition.”

–Booklist (starred review)

"A work of deep emotional resonance and acute psychological power"

–Holiday Reinhorn, author of Big Cats

“Jennifer Davis’s stories have a wry sensibility in them, and compassion, a sweet perversity, and a sense of wonder about just being alive. Her tales mark the craziness and sadness of adolescence as it collides inevitably with failed wishes, loss, and sexual desire.”

–Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius, A Comedy

"Unusually insightful and gorgeously written, these powerful stories reveal how sometimes the most unexpected discoveries in the present can illuminate the past and change a person forever.  Jennifer Davis is not only an author to watch, she's one to read–now."

–Cristina Henriquez, author of Come Together, Fall Apart

"Strange events haunt the lives of the intrepid Southern characters in the second collection (after Her Kind of Want) from Alabama native Davis. The title story concerns the parents of a fragile, gifted child obsessed with drawing antiquated war scenes and mayhem perhaps gleaned from a past life — a child so unlike the football-throwing boy the father had hoped for that he secretly ponders doing away with the boy. The troubled teen protagonist of 'Lily, Love' is matched with a lonely elderly man sick with emphysema in a community outreach program, and the two find their senses of alienation nicely compatible. 'Giving Up the Ghost,' tracks the emotional ramifications of witnessing a car accident on a young couple still reeling from the miscarriage of their baby. Frank, the husband, held the hand of the dying accident victim, an intimacy he is hesitant to share with his wife. 'Pilgrimage in Georgia' is a terrific writerly sendup about a novelist who moves to a small Southern town in order to gain the authenticity he lacks, only to be tormented by the productivity of a young writer as much a hack as he is. Davis creates magnificently conflicted characters with low-key stylistic panache. (July)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Award-winning author Davis presents an arresting and fantastically imagined collection of stories set against the backdrop of the deep American South. These nine haunting stories explore big themes in a way that redeems the act of living and the value of human relationships.