close call: stories

A door-to-door salesman’s visit shows Carol a new side of her mother and threatens the security they both had taken for granted; a woman finds out what happens when we’re ＂too busy to die＂; a woman in her fifties celebrates her newly augmented body parts; four friends try to breech a chasm in their friendship by planning a reunion; and a researcher examines his relationship to creativity in a world where it has been deemed a mental illness. Carefully crafted, surprising, and humane, the stories in Kim Suhr’s Close Call unveil emotion in tight spaces, hearts in turmoil, and the searching soul of the Midwest.