Ploughshares Summer 2018 Guest-Edited by Jill McCorkle

YES!!! After a slightly less than stellar last edition I was so ready for this one to be awesome and it was amazing! Ploughshares Summer 2018 and was edited by Jill McCorkle who admitted in her introduction that she didn't have an overall theme in mind but said she liked "to be pulled in for a ride where I'm not quite sure where I'm going but feel confident that the driver does know and will indeed deliver me to the right place." And she totally nailed it with this collection. There were a lot of stories that brought humor out of some very dark places. So here were some of my favorites:

Belle Boggs - In the Shadow of Man: This story is told from the POV of a dad who has arrived to his daughter's progressive school to find she hasn't yet returned from a field trip. What starts as parent irritation quickly descends into the spiraling panic of a separation that lasts longer than it should. I probably over-identified with the feelings and the story made me so nervous I repeatedly kept myself from advancing to the end to find out the ending. 

Ashley Crews - Day One: An aunt who has been given custody of her nephew. Slowly the reason for her husband being in jail is teased out and it's so much worse than I initially thought. But the way the Aunt and nephew learn to heal each other is really the bright spot of an otherwise devastating story.

Lee Clay Johnson - Four Walls Around Me to Hold My Life: Yikes, this story pulled down the ennui of rural America and held on to it until the whole world was permeated with a nihilistic sense of futility. BUT it was done soooo well. A man and his girlfriend fight. He tries to drown his sorrows at a bar and then at a strip club. It doesn't go well. 

Louise Marburg - Minor Thefts: Oh boy, this one brought on my teenage parental divorce feelings. Emma's parents are getting divorced and her parents are making weird choices, and she's seeking out some love of her own which is not going well. I got a little angsty reading it and remembering how I felt at the same age. So here's where Jill McCorkle is spot on, because these stories just dropped me right into the feeling of the stories.

Dan McDermott - Ramtha: Talk about finding humor in dark places. A teenager's mom gets into a cult and moves him out to the compound where the leader of the cult, Ramtha, rules. Yikes, but also hilarious.

Serene Taleb-Agha - A Hiker's Guide to Damascus: I loved this non-fiction story about the days Taleb-Agha joined a hiking group in Damascus after living in America. It was a really timely piece both about Syria and the United States. 

So again, this collection was so good and I liked them so much. I can't wait to send this to my sister so she can read them and then I can relive them again in talking about them with her.

5/5 Stars.