Good-bye, Son and Other Stories

Good-bye, Son and Other Stories, Janet Lewiss only collection of short fiction, was first published in 1946, but remains as quietly haunting today as it was then. Set in small communities of the upper Midwest and northern California in the 30s and 40s, these midcentury gems focus on the quiet cycles connecting youth and age, despair and hope, life and death. A mothers encounters with her deceased son, an aging woman sitting with the new knowledge of her troubled older sisters death, and a teenager disillusioned by her own mortality are among the characters, mostly women and girls, whom Lewis delivers. Her understated style and knack for unadorned observation embed us with them as they reckon with the disquieting forcesincomprehensible and destructive to some, enlightening to othersthat move us from birth, through life, to death. In the process, Lewis has crafted a paean to the living.