Catching Up

Written by the author of Way Below E, the short stories in this collection sparkle with a wry, occasionally dark, humor. Murphy probes with literate skill the cracks and fissures inside us all and illuminates our sometimes precarious grip on modern life. In two stories, cracks open up on the water. In the first, a young man goes fishing and catches more than he bargained for. In the second, a sailor in a foreign port suddenly finds himself with a friend who is running amok. Another fissure develops on two journeys. On one, a father tries to save his son from a woman the son can't get free of, and on the other, a mother crosses Florida on her final trip with her challenged child, a child she is now too old to tend. The last crack involves two stories of difficult love. In the first, a young widow tries to make amends with her dead husband, and in the second, a boy and his step-sister take their love for each other too far. This book is filled with stories of journeys, of loss and recovery, of love given and received. This book will delight those seeking the strange and fascinating places hidden in the day-to-day world.