Short Story Collections

Steve Watkins's fiction debut consists of twelve quirky stories featuring men and boys at critical junctures in their lives. The choices they make to solve their problems sometimes make matters worse. In "Critterworld," three brainy kids plot to murder a captive elephant at a roadside zoo in Florida. In "A Jelly of Light," an angry dad in South Georgia takes his daughter's boyfriend up in a small plane to torture him by doing aerobatics. In "Kafka's Sister," a failed American social activist seeks enlightenment in an ashram in India, and nearly kills himself by fasting and giving his food to a pair of starving children who end up stealing from him. And in "Bocky Bocky," a widower finds a drowned man washed up on a beach at Fire Island and folds the dead man's body into a yoga pose.