Synopses & Reviews
A lush, glittering short story collection exploring female obsession and desire by an award-winning author Roxane Gay calls "a consummate storyteller."
From Kentucky to the California desert, these forty-two short stories — ranging from the 80's and 90's to present day — expose expose the hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more.
On a hot July night, teenage girls sneak out of the house to meet their boyfriends by the train tracks. Members of a cult form an unsettling chorus as they proclaim their adoration for the same man. A woman luxuriates in a fantasy getaway to escape her past. A love story begins over cabbages in a grocery store, and a laundress's life is consumed by her obsession with a baseball star. After the death of a sister, two high school friends kiss all night and binge-watch Winona Ryder movies.
Leesa Cross-Smith's sensuous stories — some long, some gone in a flash, some told over text and emails — drench readers in nostalgia for summer nights and sultry days. They recall the intense friendships of teenage girls and the innate bonds between mothers, the first heady rush of desire, and the pure exhilaration of womanhood, all while holding up the wild souls of women so they can catch the light.
Review
"[A] rich collection....The delightfully idiosyncratic prose distinguishes each of the narrator's points of view within common themes of love, friendship, sex, and loyalty." Publishers Weekly
Review
"...the author has a gift for describing smells in particular and using them to conjure emotion...the language is rich and the sentiment fresh...brilliant writing and insight." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"It is the strength of the female
characters...that truly binds this collection together....The [women] throughout this collection are constantly being revealed by a
powerful inner light."
New York Times Book Review
Review
"I so admire these stirring, sexy, haunting stories about the darkest corners of women's inner lives. A treat for the soul and the senses, and funny too. Leesa Cross-Smith is a wonderful storyteller." Alexia Arthurs, award-winning author of How to Love a Jamaican
About the Author
Leesa Cross-Smith is a homemaker and the author of Every Kiss A War and Whiskey & Ribbons. She lives in Kentucky with her husband and children.