So this afternoon I typed the first paragraph of my new linked short-story collection with a working title of “Strong. Southern. Women.” (periods are intentional) The story is about a widow who was left to raise three young daughters on her own. Each of the twenty stories currently planned is about how the girls grow up, leave home, and (because each has an individual fatal flaw) fall from grace, destroying their lives–they think. One goes to white-collar prison. One descends into opioid addiction. And one winds up in a battered women’s shelter with her young son.
But their mother, who is both the one who held them together and who instilled the seeds of their self-destruction, gives them space, after they make the hard decision to reorder their lives, to grow, to gather up the pieces, and to get back on their feet. It’s going to be Southern Gothic again, but much more inspirational and happy-ending than Hurricane Baby.
I have an outline of all the stories and the backstory, and I’ve so far finally gotten started. We will see where this writing journey takes me. Wish me well!
Julie Liddell Whitehead 