Liz Prato – författare

A current of longing runs through twenty-two short stories by Oregon writers. As the characters strive for connection, they make mistakes, reach out to the wrong people, and recalibrate their lives based on what they desire, whether or not it's attainable--or even a good idea. Editor Liz Prato has curated a powerful collection of smart, funny, sad, and exquisite stories about the losses that shape our lives.

In 1910 Sabé Parella makes the journey from northern Italy to southern Colorado to join her husband who had gone ahead to work in the coal mines. But when Sabé arrives along the banks of the Purgatoire River, he is nowhere to be found.Based on Prato’s ancestors, Purgatoire paints a gripping portrait of Italian immigrants in rural America, and how the shame and secrecy of one man’s abandonment haunts a family for generations. A single mother fights to reunite with her children, an immortal cat yearns for kin, a bootlegger’s recklessness devastates his family, queer folk escape to secret spaces, and stranded spirits narrate, converse, and sometimes violate the laws of their realm: they interfere with the fate of the living.Melding familial research with richly imagined fiction, Prato weaves a mesmerizing story of the complex relationships between parents and children, the transcendent need for connection and redemption, and what we owe to our true desires.