One of the stories in No Comma, Period, Rage, begins simply enough with a family road trip to New Mexico. The parents are struggling (and failing) to maintain normalcy with their children as one of them faces mortality. In this collection, loss, anger, and confusion--and the repercussions that occur when they are left unresolved are explored. In a number of the stories a normal life is tested and thrown off the track by the unexpected.

In "1978" a boy struggles to survive at a new and dangerous school while still suffering from his father's death. The story "Inflation" focuses upon a teenage fence who desperately wants to maintain his needy girlfriend's happiness, but a friend's trouble complicates his pursuit of cash. In the title story "No Comma, Period, Rage," a broken hearted man agrees to leave isolation to meet a woman only to have his patience tested to extreme by a psychotic party guest. In "No Soap, Radio" a novelty executive seeking answers to his financial woes finds an unlikely solution in the seedy underworld of reality television.

These tragicomic stories illuminate the difficulties of communication, maintaining a Jewish identity, the intricacies of relationships and sex, and the need to find one's true self.

Synopsis

Shelby Grant meets her husband Kent Gannon while doing scientific research in Cape Town, South Africa, where they both get caught up in a movement against government denial of AIDS in the early 2000s. They return to their homes in the US, marry and have a child. Having always shared an atheistic worldview, their marriage is threatened when Shelby, racked by guilt over something she did in South Africa, turns to the Catholic Church to seek redemption.

House Secrets is a coming of age story of an African-American girl living in Arkansas during the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Sophie lives with her abusive mother who threatens her survival. Sophie wants desperately to be reunited with her father who disappeared in the summer of 1967. Finding her father will unravel the secrets of her past, saving her life and breaking the generational curses born out of the legacy of slavery.

Wide Blue Sky, is the story of a young African-American woman, Violet Bishop, coming of age in 1920's Tennessee. Violet is a talented artist. However, most deem her a keeper of dangerous delusions no colored girl can afford to consider. Wide Blue Sky follows Violet from the rustic backdrop of Tennessee to Harlem's glittering Cotton Club and intellectually chic Dark Tower Salon, to its seedy underbelly and middle-class enclaves as Violet journeys from Tennessee to New York, from girl to adulthood, and from dreamer to doer during America's Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance.

When her twin brother is stricken with a mysterious illness of supernatural origin, sixteen year old Annaliese sets out on a search for the cure. Her quest leads her from her home in 19th century Boston to New York...and into deadly danger. The journey requires all her courage and wits as Annaliese fights to save not only her brother, but also herself.

This is a partial narrative fiction manuscript.

Abstract not required for MFA Thesis

Historic Fiction about Guerrilla Warfare in northwest Missouri at the time of the Civil War.

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This is a partial narrative fiction manuscript.