Pia Z. Ehrhardt won the 2005 Narrative Prize for her story "Famous Fathers," the title story of this collection. (The story is available in our Archive.) As a writer, Ehrhardt lived a little before turning to the page, and her experience as a wife, mother, daughter, and keen observer shows in her debut. In this collection she is concerned with the way women of all ages struggle to move beyond their childhood families and accept the choices they've made as adults - or to make new ones. "I'd like to remind them he's just a man," says the teenage protagonist of "Famous Fathers," speaking of her father, the mayor; "but his office impresses me too." Most of the young women in this collection are impressed by the office of fatherhood, and the fathers tend to abuse this privilege by crossing subtle but powerful boundaries of intimacy with their daughters. Handling these transgressions, while admitting to their own longing, ties the girls up in knots. They are savvy enough to recognize the offense but powerless to keep it from emerging in their own fledgling attempts to reach out beyond the family toward partnerships of their own. The push-pull of the desire to be close to a man and the fear they learned at their parents' feet keep the prose tense with reversals and the plotlines alive with revelations. These are lean stories, swift and surprising in the way they refuse to settle the reader's expectations: more often than not, the protagonist - wife, mother - wants something more than what she has. The force of their desire is frustrating, endearing, and true.

On occasion, the narrator looks around the room, and Ehrhardt has a gift for lucid description that has the hyperreal effect of a still life, causing one to recognize the elegance of an ordinary thing. It's the mark of a natural storyteller, the lightest touch to remind you that she has set you down in a world that is completely real and utterly gifted to the reader till the story?s end.

L. C. - Narrative Magazine?s First & Second Looks

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