Drastic : Stories

Meet the college graduate working in a whole body–donation clinic; a young woman obsessed with Benedictine monks; a middle-aged woman who becomes a stand-in talk-show guest; unlikely friends who meet in a domestic violence shelter; a young girl & the father who stole her away to escape his wife's mental illness; a graduate student from a suburban family who believes her physical connection to the world is deteriorating. Maud Casey -- author of The Shape of Things to Come, a New York Times Notable Book -- explores how we survive modern crises of loss & love through the lives of emotional & geographic nomads. Each flirts with madness & self-destruction while reaching toward life. These simple gestures of optimism & vitality, gorgeously rendered, make drastic an unforgettable collection.°°° Maud Casey is the author of three novels, most recently The Man Who Walked Away, & a story collection, Drastic. She is the grateful recipient of the Italo Calvino Prize, the St. Francis College Literary Prize, & a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Washington, D.C. & teaches at the University of Maryland.www.maudcasey.com Meet the college graduate working in a whole body-donation clinic; a young woman obsessed with Benedictine monks; a middle-aged woman who becomes a stand-in talk-show guest; unlikely friends who meet in a domestic violence shelter; a young girl and the father who stole her away to escape his wife's mental illness; a graduate student from a suburban family who believes her physical connection to the world is deteriorating. Maud Casey -- author of The Shape of Things to Come, a New York Times Notable Book -- explores how we survive modern crises of loss and love through the lives of emotional and geographic nomads. Each flirts with madness and self-destruction while reaching toward life. These simple gestures of optimism and vitality, gorgeously rendered, make drastic an unforgettable collection.