Direct Sunlight: Stories - Paperback

by Christine Sneed (Author)

A collection of twelve stories by award-winning author Christine Sneed

The stories in Direct Sunlight, award-winning author Christine Sneed's latest, are inspired by the memorable strangeness of everyday life. The characters in these topically diverse tales experience events that bring the terms of their day-to-day lives and their relationships into focus in a way hitherto foreign to them.

The title story features two adult children learning of their father's second family long after his death in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "Mega Millions" explores the aftermath of a small-town midwestern factory employee's enormous lottery win. In "Dear Kelly Bloom," a young journalist takes on the role of advice columnist at a faltering Chicago newspaper around the time of the 2008 financial meltdown and soon finds himself tasked with replying to his own mother's letter requesting guidance on family matters. In "The Monkey's Uncle Louis," a contentedly childless man tries to make sense of his sister's decision to adopt a capuchin monkey after she and her husband find themselves unable to conceive a baby of their own.

The stories in Direct Sunlight rely on humor but are balanced by Sneed's clear-eyed sobriety about the sorrows inherent in the human condition.

Author Biography

CHRISTINE SNEED is the author of three novels and two previous story collections, most recently Please Be Advised and The Virginity of Famous Men. She is also the editor of a collection of short fiction, Love in the Time of Time's Up. Sneed has received the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction and the Chicago Public Library Foundation's 21st Century Award, among other honors, and has published stories in The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories. She lives in Pasadena, California.