A wounded bird. A Chicago taxi ride. A secret in an old coat. Forty sudden stories reveal how closely every human life touches another.
In these forty life-altering, life-affirming, and extremely short short stories, the award-winning poet Naomi Shihab Nye proposes that no matter how great the divide between friends, siblings, life and death, classmates, enemies, happiness and misery, war and peace, breakfast and lunch, parent and child, country and city, there is, in fact, no long distance. Not anymore.
Shihab Nye charts how quickly casual distance collapses, following teenagers who discover unexpected solidarity in hospital rooms, airport gates, and quiet city streets.
These brief narratives linger on concrete turns of daily life—rescuing a stunned dove, baking fresh beets into cake, or carrying a single bullet down a sweltering sidewalk.
- Coming of Age: Trapped on a flight to Boston beside his sharp-tongued former English teacher, a resentful high school graduate impulsively claims he plans to become a weatherman.
- Family Dynamics: Moving into a vine-covered mansion on Army Boulevard, a teenager learns to decipher pill bottles and eavesdrop on her aging grandmother’s late-night phone calls with Montana.
- Grief and Healing: Wandering the restored boulevards of Berlin with fresh stationery, a grieving daughter discovers unexpected hope while navigating an unfamiliar language.
- Sibling Dynamics: Confronting an abandoned zoo pit, sixteen-year-old Lola attempts to distract her younger sister from recurring midnight terrors about sewer rodents.
- Also by This Author: Going Going.
