Meat Eaters & Plant Eaters

Born in Canada, Jessica Treat grew up in New England and lived for a number of years in Mexico City. The author of two previous story collections: A Robber in the House (Coffee House Press), and Not a Chance (FC2), both in their second printings, Jessica Treat has long been known for her work in the short-short story form.

From Publishers WeeklyIn her skillful third collection, Treat offers short, sharp glimpses into her characters' yawning existential anxiety. A wife vanishes from her home in the first tale, Beached, narrated by her husband who recalls her fatal flaw in seeking out crowded, noisy places in order to fill up the quiet inside her. Similarly, in Hans and His Daughter, a wife and mother abandons her home inexplicably, forcing her husband to care for their two-year-old and manage, sorrowfully but rather ingeniously. In the space of two pages, Treat can convey a powerful epiphany, such as the sad state of middle-aged love in A Visit, in which an emotionally stunted man prepares his home for a rendezvous with his married love interest, who already recognizes that they will never connect sexually. Moreover, Treat moves among different POVs with marvelous fluidity, as in the vivid and ferocious More Than Winter or Spring, about two girls who love and hate each other in equal, cunning measure. Treat has a keen eye for the floor-falling moment. (June)San Diego Union Tribune; Los Angeles Reader; Minneapolis Star Tribune; American Book Review; Double Room; Cimarron Review.