Bewildered By Carla Panciera

"This is a world of secret-sharers, a noisy world full of unimaginable silence," claims one of the characters in this compelling debut collection. The ten stories in Bewilderedexamine small-world disruptions―mistimed infatuations, devastating diagnoses, the realizations inherent in loss. Characters look up from what they assumed were ordinary lives amazed to discover where they find themselves._x000D_

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Familiar landscapes―city streets, coastal towns emptied of tourists, suburban neighborhoods―are backdrops for unfulfilled dreams: the luckiest man alive arouses the suspicions of those he most wants to befriend, a grieving lover invites herself into another's life, a young girl discovers her tea leaves reveal nothing as life-altering as those of her friend, the straying husband pays a debt for his and his son's obsessions._x000D_

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The stories ask: Can you live any way forever? What links them is what links all of us: the desire to belong, the need to heal, the fear of what happens next.