Emergency

A searing volume of stories starring women facing points of no return, from a “penetrating and elegant” (Paris Review) writer.

A woman finds a photograph of her deceased mother in a compromising position on the wall of an art museum. A divorcee decamps to a place where nobody knows her name but can’t escape the watchful eye of the world she’s slipped away from. A transplant to a new city must make a choice about whom she trusts when her partner reveals a fundamental truth about himself.

For readers of explosive stories by Lauren Groff, Joy Williams, and Deborah Eisenberg, Emergency presents seven radically intimate, masterfully executed excavations of the unfreedoms of American life and the guilt that stalks those who survive them. Grappling with poverty and addiction, class ascension and sexual power, the women in these stories try to pay down the psychic debts of their old lives as they search for a new happiness they can afford.

About the Author: Kathleen Alcott is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, including Infinite Home. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, Harper's Magazine, and elsewhere. Listed twice for the Sunday Times Short Story Award, her short fiction has also been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories. She lives on the Sonoma Coast of California.