A Lesson in Manners

by Misty Urban

Overview

Winner of the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award. The ten stories in this haunting and hilarious collection offer a how-to manual for dealing with love, lies, and loneliness. Sam Wesson, an up-and-coming country western singer, plots to get pregnant without her boyfriend's consent, while Dacey, already pregnant, confronts her cheating husband over her secret checking account. Andrea rescues a stray dog to avoid facing her complicated human relationships. Sarah, an exotic dancer, longs for employment at  religious theme park, and Amelia dreams of creating impossible bonsai. Whether facing life-threatening illness or overwhelming loss, these characters scheme in humble, funny, sympathetic, and outrageous ways to find an etiquette that will deliver them from disappointment and shield them from crushing grief.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940165288470
Publisher:	Canty Dames
Publication date:	02/02/2021
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
File size:	297 KB

About the Author

Misty Urban is a fiction writer, medievalist, editor, and teacher. Her debut short story collection, A Lesson in Manners, won the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award for Fiction and was published by Snake Nation Press, and her second short story collection was released by Paradisiac Publishing. Her short fiction and creative nonfiction have been widely published and received several awards, including two nominations for a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of assorted works of medieval scholarship, including Monstrous Women in Middle English Romance, and co-editor of Melusine's Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth. She teaches at Muscatine Community College in Muscatine, IA, where she reads and writes in the company of one handsome park ranger, two small people who like to be read to, and a rather heavy collection of books.

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/26/2016
Urban takes readers on an amazing journey in this exceptional collection of short stories. She travels from a nameless hospital in the title story, where a young woman is trying to understand how her once perfectly healthy younger sister could be slowly dying of a tumor, to a Tennessee bar, where an up-and-coming country western singer yearns to make a baby with her unsuspecting boyfriend (“The Memoirs of Sam Wesson”), to an Evanston, Ill., center for healing, where an emotionally damaged employee is on the cusp of recovering from the death of her beloved adopted sister (“Planet Joy”). The author has an uncanny ability to explore relationships, love, and loss in a fresh and original way. In “Trying to Find a Corndog in Tompkins County,” an Arkansas woman, pregnant with her first child, contemplates fleeing the husband who raped her in order to claim the future she was meant to have. In “Welcome to the Holy Land,” an exotic dancer seeks redemption in a Tampa religious theme park, having fallen in love with the actor who plays Jesus in one of the exhibits. These are powerful stories told by a strong voice and written with vivid precision, leaving readers wondering what happens to the characters after their stories end. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly