That's True of Everybody

The stories in That's True of Everybody are tales of ordinary, mostly blue-collar middle Americans, each of whom is leading a life of often silent, often noisy desperation. Some are without hope. Some are desperately trying to keep afloat with varying degrees of success. The settings, too, are ordinary: a bowling alley, a lawn-mowing business, a drive-in theater. But the themes are startlingly familiar and unmistakably American. A father and bowling alley owner, Harry...
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The stories in That's True of Everybody are tales of ordinary, mostly blue-collar middle Americans, each of whom is leading a life of often silent, often noisy desperation. Some are without hope. Some are desperately trying to keep afloat with varying degrees of success. The settings, too, are ordinary: a bowling alley, a lawn-mowing business, a drive-in theater. But the themes are startlingly familiar and unmistakably American.
A father and bowling alley owner, Harry Kreevitch, searches for his missing "lane girl" and navigates the uncertain terrain of father-daughter relationships. A fourteen-year-old girl who has a mother with a penchant for leaving, manages her dad's finances and witnesses his awkward affair with their next door neighbor. A tall boy from the west side of town meets a pudgy, moon-faced girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Each story stands alone, and yet the whole has a magic all its own.
The stories in this collection have previously appeared in the following publications:

"Thirty-Year-Old Women Do Not Always Come Home" DoubleTake, Summer 1999
"Ace of Hearts," American Short Fiction, #17 (Spring 1995)
"Song For a Certain Girl," Ploughshares, Fall 2000
"The Visiting Poet," Playboy, April 1993
"The Untenured Lecturer" [published as "That's True of Everybody"], TriQuarterly, Spring 2001
"Janda's Sister," Witness, Fall 1992
"Last Love Song at the Valentine," The Greensboro Review, Fall 1994
"Traveler's Advisory," Third Coast, Spring 2000
"Obvious Questions," Northeast Corridor, Fall 1997
"Rain Itself," Passages North, Spring 1995
"How We Came To Indiana," Story Quarterly, Fall 2000