The House on Figueroa

The five-story Victorian house on Figueroa in this book of short stories is both a real place and a mythical way station where people must face changing fortunes that complicate even the most ordinary lives. Immigrants struggle to adapt, failure looms at the edges of happy marriages, even the most benign circumstances threaten sanity itself. The defining conflicts in The House on Figueroa are sharply delineated in crisp prose fresh imagery: wind that smells like a chainsaw, a Mexican sweetcake in a jewelry box, a painting with crushed roses broken glass. A dying woman banishes her husband from her sick-bed, a scientist fudges an important experiment. What happens next? How do people survive irrevocable changes? Delve into this collection to find out.