Third Class Relics

Forty-one-year-old Abra, the narrator of Third Class Relics, gathers with her brother and cousins for an uncomfortable dinner the night after her father’s wake. No one speaks of the one missing family member--Jeffrey, the youngest cousin--nor of his doppelganger, Rupert, whose name Abra’s father cried out just before his death. When the evening comes to a close, Abra finds herself prowling her family’s history against her will. As she journeys through their darkest chapters, she is forced to confront the complex role Jeffrey/Rupert played in both healing and destroying them all, as well as the significance of her relationship with her cousin Andrei, who has spent twenty years blaming himself for the family’s defining tragedy. Third Class Relics recalls many Biblical myths, stories in which one person must perish so that those around him might be awakened to their inner darkness but also to their capacity for redemption.

ELIZABETH GENOVISE grew up in Villa Park, Illinois and earned her MFA in fiction at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. She has been the recipient of an O. Henry prize among other honors and has published five collections of short stories: A Different Harbor, Where There Are Two or More, Posing Nude for the Saints, Palindrome, and Lighthouse Dreams, as well as a novella, The Numismatist. She teaches literature and writing near Knoxville, Tennessee.