Synopses & Reviews
Audie® Award Finalist!
A remarkable debut short-story collection by a fresh and captivating new voice in American literature.
Z.Z. Packer's first collection of short stories is rich with unexpected turns, indelible images, and penetrating insight that belies someone so young. Her stories plunge us into the worlds of people living on the edge and to the flashpoints that make or break them, that shape their worldviews forever. In The Stranger, a third-grade girl tries to find her place in the microcosm of summer camp in the larger world in 1981 during the height of the Atlanta child murders. The girl's bathroom at camp is the setting for a clash between an all-black and an all-white Brownie troop in Brownies. Two young women prod the boundaries of friendship and love in Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.
A highly anticipated debut from an award-winning young writer.
About the Author
Hailing from Connecticut, by way of New York, SHIRLEY JORDAN has appeared in numerous stage, television productions, and commericals. Her TV credits include Ally McBeal, The West Wing, Friends, CSI, Angel, and Judging Amy.Z.Z. Packer's first collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and a New York Times Notable Book, and was selected by John Updike for the Today Show Book Club. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction, a Whiting Writers' Award, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Packer is on the faculty of California College of the Arts, and her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories and New Stories from the South.
Table of Contents
Brownies -- Every tongue shall confess -- Our Lady of Peace -- The ant of the self -- Drinking coffee elsewhere -- Speaking in tongues -- Geese -- Doris is coming.