Please Come Back To Me: Stories and a Novella (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction Ser.) - Softcover

Beautifully written and fully imagined, Treadway's work reminds us that the short story form is alive and well.

Most of Treadway’s prose is clear and searingly direct. She tells her stories without flash or florid embellishments. But the little insights and illuminating details are all the more vivid in their spare dryness. Instead of telling us what the characters are feeling, she shows us.

In almost all of these stories, characters are presented with a chance to redeem themselves; some of them seize it, some do not. . . . Treadway is at her best when she depicts characters colliding with one another in the blind clutch of life, without anyone being particularly more at fault than another―when tragedy results from circumstances of misunderstanding and human weakness. . . . Treadway succeeds brilliantly in describing the state of “going blank,” striking close to the core of why we don’t see ourselves doing the things we do.

Treadway writes with deep intelligence, great sensitivity, and even greater heart. These stories make a reader feel completely at home and yet continually surprised. Please Come Back To Me offers compelling material, delivered by an author who understands that truth is always richer when delivered with compassion.

Each of the eight stories in this collection stands on its own, but together, this assemblage of portraits of strikingly raw humans provides a depth of feeling and detail that will keep the reader captivated and longing to observe these characters for just a bit longer.

Jessica Treadway's Please Come Back to Me is a collection of spare and insightful stories that explore the limits of love and forgiveness. Treadway's sure and quietly penetrating style is reminiscent of Raymond Carver and Andre Dubus. Many stories focus on marriage and parenting, but there's no sentimentality here, only flashes of dark humor.