1901’s high-flying little girl is all grown up now — a daredevil, flag pole-sitting flapper who falls for (and with) the brother of two young men who cannot leave their house until called to the ultimate test: to rescue their fallen brother and his new love.
1926 BETWEEN THE HAMMER AND THE ANVIL IN KENTUCKY
An old woman looks back at the tragic reason behind her parents’ divorce.
1927 ASSISIAN IN MASSACHUSETTS
A drunkenly candid supporter of the Fall River Animal Rescue League tells the “true” story of Lizzie Borden and the murderous deed that historical consensus has ascribed to her.
1928 MISDEEMED IN INDIANA
A newlywed wife can’t abide her husband’s disgustingly peculiar fetish; in an effort to understand it, she solicits the opinion of an ill-equipped door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.
1929 TAKING A DIM VIEW IN MICHIGAN
A sexually reticent woman who is losing her eyesight decides to cop a look at a well-formed man in his most natural state before it’s too late.
1930 WITHOUT APRON STRINGS IN DELAWARE
A middle-aged man finally tracks down the mother who gave him up for adoption when he was a baby, with unexpected results.
1931 AWED AND WONDERING IN CONNECTICUT
When propositioned by her boss with the admonition that a refusal will result in the loss of her job, a woman gets a response from her unemployed husband that she never expected.
1932 FASCISTIC IN D.C.
A participant in the “Bonus Army” march on Washington gives his account of the last hours of the army’s occupancy of the city, with special attention paid to the man whose job it was to clear D.C. of all veteran “vagrants.”
1933 LETTING GO IN MISSOURI
While waiting for the midnight legalization of “near” beer, two friends who are also employer and employee at a local ice company discuss the recent crash of the dirigible USS Akron and its relevance to a difficult decision the ice company’s owner has made.
1934 ADULTEROUS IN ILLINOIS
The husband of one couple and the wife of another decide to confess their affair to their respective spouses at the Chicago World’s Fair with disastrous, albeit not unpredictable, results.
1935 PERSEVERINGLY TERPSICHOREAN IN WASHINGTON STATE
Two older women from different sides of the track form a friendship while watching a dance marathon and cheering on their favorite couples — a friendship that is destined to last no longer than the viability of the couples who compete before them.
1936 SHABBY-GENTEEL IN CALIFORNIA
A migrant worker is invited to a proper tea party, but all is not what it seems.
1937 DEPILATED IN OHIO
A teenage girl takes a stand against her adoptive parents’ constant displays of hatred for one another; she threatens to cut off all of her luxuriously long hair, and then promptly follows through with the help of a sympathetic local sheep shearer.
1938 JIVING IN NEBRASKA
A physically disabled, jitterbug-music-crazed young man moves back to Omaha from New York and tries to convince his girlfriend to join him, though she no longer wishes to keep to the sidelines with the whole country jump-jivin’ with able-bodied exuberance.
1939 GALACTOPHOROUS IN VIRGINIA
MGM wants to turn a novelist’s best-seller into the next Gone With the Wind. The problem: the writer has the last word in how the story gets retold for the screen, and pre-emptive censorship on the part of the studio is making it a bad day for all concerned.
1940 AU FAIT IN COLORADO, NEW MEXICO, AND CALIFORNIA
A fifteen-year-old savant on the Santa Fe Super Chief befriends Charlie McCarthy and earns a slot on the Quiz Kids radio broadcast, before the tragic truth about the boy’s limitations derails his parents’ dreams for their child.
1941 UNDER ATTACK IN HAWAII
A Hawaiian third grader writes a personal account of the bombing of Pearl Harbor a few days after the attack.
1942 CERULEAN IN WISCONSIN
A young wife whose husband is serving in World War II suffers debilitating and nearly tragic post-partum depression following the birth of her second child
1943 TELEGRAPHIC IN IOWA
A Western Union messenger boy in a town hard hit by World War II casualties cannot help being regarded by his neighbors as the messenger of death.
1944 SEQUESTERED IN NEW MEXICO
A married couple remembers the Manhattan Project as something both historically monumental and domestically challenging.
1945 HYPERNATREMIC IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN
Two sailors, survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, wait in shark-infested waters for help that doesn’t come.
1946 ENNEADIC IN IOWA
A Dutch-American mathematics professor, having lost his family in the Holocaust, finds in his ongoing calculation of pi something that betrays his belief in disbelief.
1947 RACIST IN TENNESSEE
Memphis’s censor czar, exercising bigoted and sometimes ridiculously arbitrary control over the movies that will be seen within his jurisdiction, entertains a visiting delegation of movie house managers hoping to convince him to soften his heavy-handed authority.
1948 HAUNTED IN CONNECTICUT
One of the men digging a well for a World War II veteran’s new house in Connecticut bears a haunting resemblance to a soldier who saved the man’s life during the Bataan death march.
1949 BALL CHANGING IN MISSISSIPPI
A Saturday morning kiddy talent show broadcast takes a few unexpected comical twists and turns before the winners are finally crowned.
1950 POIKILOTHERMAL IN WEST VIRGINIA
Snowbound with his fiancée and her family, a disturbed young man wrestles with sadistic impulses that are ultimately his undoing.
1951 PSITTICINE IN PENNSYLVANIA
A blind woman discovers the troubling truth about her friend’s potty-mouthed parrot.
1952 DOUBLY UXORICIDAL IN COLORADO
Separated-from-birth twin brothers discover one another by chance and take advantage of their good fortune by plotting crisscross murders of their respective problem spouses.
1953 PHARISAICAL IN WYOMING
A traveling tent show revivalist preacher becomes self-appointed and unwelcome negotiator on behalf of the hostages in a bank holdup.
1954 FAMISHED IN TEXAS
A self-absorbed suburban wife can’t be bothered to help her emotionally fragile, literally starving aunt, even though it means losing her husband and daughter.
1955 AGITATED IN ALABAMA
Riding the bus in Montgomery, two white female friends find little common ground in how they view the city’s black bus boycott.
1956 DISCREETLY SILENT IN MONTANA
A doctor and a deputy sheriff must decide what to tell the families of the two closeted teenaged boys whose lives came to a tragic end in a late-night automobile crash.
1957 LOYAL IN UTAH
Faculty and staff of a Presbyterian boarding school are asked to sign a loyalty oath as a condition of their employment.
1958 EXPLOSIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA
A story told in reverse about the accidental dropping of an atomic bomb (sans nuclear components) on a rural community.
1959 TIGHT IN NEW YORK
It’s New Year’s Eve in Westchester and the babysitter’s balking; she refuses to get in the car with her employer, who’s started his potable-partying a little earlier than usual.