The Goodbye Process

In this arresting debut collection of short stories, Mary Jones uses her distinctive, exacting voice to examine the painful ways we say goodbye. With satisfying depth and mouth-dropping details, these stories will push you out of your comfort zone and ignite intense emotions surrounding love and loss. Grief unites us all, as Mary's stories illustrate and exhume. A woman camps out on the porch of an ex-lover who has barricaded himself inside his house; a fatherless preteen girl gets caught shoplifting and then finds herself in grave danger; a widow moves back to her hometown and befriends a college student; a Los Angeles real estate agent falls for a woman who helps him detach from years of dramatic plastic surgery; a man hires a professional mourner to ensure his wife's funeral is a success. The stories gathered in this collection are dark, stunning, original, and beautifully rendered. The Goodbye Process will pack a punch, just the way grief does--knocking us off our feet.