Solos By Genre | Ploughshares

"Of course, they choose the Fourth of July to reenact their childhood, a holiday known for explosions, maimed limbs, trumped-up loyalty. The kids—Abby will never stop calling them that—have grown unduly nostalgic in the past year, mythologizing her mediocre dinners, romanticizing their sporadic vacations, basically whitewashing decades of benign neglect into a family life that neither she nor Hank recognizes."

"Claire remembered sitting between her mother's knees on a green plastic stool and crying this way: breathy and brutal and practically wild. Her mother refused to relax her hair but she also refused to learn to comb through it without causing Claire intense pain, the breakage of of Claire's hair, and the snap of some combs. That all changed when Claire discovered braids, and that she could have this pain only five times a year.

"At first, the Pekingese lived in the same building as me—actually, he was in the apartment right across the hall. I’d often encounter him sitting outside the door when I left for work in the morning or the afternoon, or when I was coming home at lunchtime and in the evening. Tiny, feeble, matted hair, an exhausted expression—he was a pitiful sight to behold. Such a well-behaved dog, too."

"Somehow, I understood, even as a kid, that I’d never learn the truth about my father directly, a man who hid the truth from himself so thoroughly, the hinges of his mind almost always welded shut but, lubricated by drink, sometimes swinging open as he exposed, then tried to protect himself from, his wounds like a cornered porcupine, its back to me, hissing, its needles extended, erect and ready to let fly."

After college professor Cass receives an intriguing student response to an art assignment about human connection, she considers the hidden selfish desires behind acts of kindness toward strangers. When she shows the submission to her brother, Glen, the pair reflect on their own dysfunctional family and unfulfilled personal lives.

As he awaits the results of his HIV test, Eduardo recalls the summer of his thirteenth year, when he learned about the crimes of his father, a Nazi officer at Dachau. Struggling with this knowledge, young Eduardo takes solace in visiting the lake where his father died, but his guilt is complicated by the knowledge that as a gay man, in a different time, he too might have been a victim of his father’s.

On a trip to Disney's Fort Wilderness with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend June and her family, George spends most of the trip counting down the minutes until he can return to New York. On the last night of their vacation, June’s abusive mother joins them for dinner and her sister seems to disappear, revealing fractures no one wants to acknowledge. Sometimes we can't escape our pasts but must confront them head on.

Nellie’s brother Jimmy passed away when she was only nine years old. As she reflects on the accident that claimed his life, she must acknowledge her own mortality and the empty space that death leaves behind.

Dr. Katya Vidović left behind memories of war and a dying mother when she emigrated from Croatia to the United States as a child. Now working with adolescent girls who suffer from eating disorders fueled by the fear of losing control, Katya struggles to help her patients while confronting her own desperate need to make peace with the past. 

When a mother and her baby are found dead in their car, a small New England town is forced to confront its secrets. As the news settles and rumors spread, the mother of the young family must grapple with the new understanding that this town is not the safe and peaceful place it pretends to be.