Hands to work

Jessica Caitlin Bryant
Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:45:54 PDT

"This collection explores characters that are facing life's most trying inevitabilities - longing, suffering and death - while at the same time interacting with the beauty of the world. At times hopeful, at times bleak, the characters in these stories are either pursuing this beauty in spite of their everyday struggles or retreating from it. Some ignore it altogether and find perfect solace. All of these stories pose questions about how we deal with various types of loss, and how our faith perseveres regardless of what falls apart around us. Crafted with the works of Rick Bass and Gabriel Garcia Marquez in mind, these stories take on the natural world as a magical place inseparable from our ordinary existence. What they ask of the reader is openness to the idea that pain and grace are also tied in such a way that one cannot be truly appreciated without the other"--Leaf iii