Tiny Shoes Dancing and Other Stories

Jody catalogues her parental failures as she worries whether her ballet-crazed teen daughter will make it onto the stage. C.J. adopts his dead grandmother’s dog, risking eviction but opening himself to the possibility of love. Brianna uses a spoonful of pudding as a weapon. Judy begins a secret life as an erotica writer. Jake’s Bar Mitzvah preparations reveal tensions that threaten to split his family.

The women, men, children, dogs, and cats in these stories fight their worst impulses, circ...