![]() These stories showcase the wide range of Cross-Smith’s talent. It was lazy, like cold French fries”) distinguishes each of the narrator’s points of view within common themes of love, friendship, sex, and loyalty. ![]() In “California, Keep Us,” a Kentucky couple, mourning the loss of their baby, retreats once a month for a weekend in California to assume different identities with one another and resolve not to “talk about death.” The delightfully idiosyncratic prose (“She felt guilty about lusting over Clint. In “Pink Bubblegum and Flowers,” a young woman crushes on one of the men rebuilding the deck on her parents’ house and navigates a tense scene of toxic masculinity. “Teenage Dream Time Machine” unfolds as a texting conversation between two mothers worried about their young, wild daughters and remembering their own impetuous youth. ![]() She lives in Kentucky with her husband and their two teenagers. ![]() The brief opener, “We, Moons,” an explosion of slam cadence (“We’re okay, our hearts, dusted with pink”), serves as a battle hymn of self-determination and sisterhood that thematically unites the subsequent narratives. Leesa Cross-Smith is a homemaker and the author of Every Kiss A War, Whiskey & Ribbons, So We Can Glow, This Close to Okay, and Half-Blown Rose. Cross-Smith’s rich collection (after Whiskey & Ribbons) follows women exploring desire, desperation, and despair. ![]()
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