Bewildered: Stories (Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction)

"This is a world of secret-sharers, a noisy world full of unimaginable silence," claims one of the characters in this compelling debut collection. The ten stories in Bewildered examine small-world disruptions--mistimed infatuations, devastating diagnoses, the realizations inherent in loss. Characters look up from what they assumed were ordinary lives amazed to discover where they find themselves.

Familiar landscapes--city streets, coastal towns emptied of tourists, suburban neighborhoods--are backdrops for unfulfilled dreams: the luckiest man alive arouses the suspicions of those he most wants to befriend, a grieving lover invites herself into another's life, a young girl discovers her tea leaves reveal nothing as life-altering as those of her friend, the straying husband pays a debt for his and his son's obsessions.

The stories ask: Can you live any way forever? What links them is what links all of us: the desire to belong, the need to heal, the fear of what happens next.