fwriction

The Story of the Day feature has taken some time off, much to my dismay. Alas, it returns on this sunny Wednesday, with Karen Russell’s new short story in The New Yorker. Russell, whose debut collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is one of the best collections in years, has her first novel, Swamplandia!, coming next year from Random House. For now, enjoy this new story (and a great look at St. Lucy’s):

“At seventeen, Louis was the youngest member of the crew. It was the height of the Depression, and sometimes the men turned to the past for distraction—talking about the girlfriends they’d left mooning after them in red diner booths in Decatur, their high-school teachers, somebody’s family store in Rascal Mountain, Georgia, their Army stints, the dogs and the children still on terra firma, the debts they’d gleefully abandoned. Inside the suck of the other guys’ nostalgia, Louis became almost unbearably nervous.”