The Missing

Each of the seven stories in Tory Tuttle's luminous first collection explores dislocation, whether from losing a child or the protection of a parent, or as a strategy to escape reality. A mother measures the distance growing between herself and her first child, who lived only three weeks; a teenager runs away from abuse, detention, and the indifference of her mother; a janitor's hold on reality dissolves after witnessing the murder of a child; a traveler, lacerated by the death of her sister, seeks solace through flight; a lonely woman whose child was stillborn experiences the world through daily bus rides; a woman is abandoned by her lover and her mother, though in drastically different ways; a wife protects her children by finally leaving her abusive husband. These uniquely rendered portraits, often impressionistic, depict the accommodations one makes to survive a world frequently inhospitable to human desire and longing.