DESTINATION UNEXPECTED

“The journey need not be long, nor the destination exotic. It can be as simple as a walk around the block where you see something you never noticed before.” The ten stories in Gallo’s new collection are in the literary tradition of stories about journeys. In Joyce Sweeney’s “Something Old, Something New,” Darius Holmsby goes on a journey across town by bus, from his all-black street in Section Eight housing to the Coral Springs library, where he finds a community that accepts him as a writer. In David Lubar’s “Bread on the Water,” Tommy discovers a friend’s humanity when he invites a homeless man to the local diner. Ellen Wittlinger’s self-absorbed protagonist on a Cape Cod vacation finds more than she expected about children and family. Will Weaver, Graham Salisbury, Richard Peck, and others offer stylistically similar, first-person stories of epiphanies and glimpses at unsuspected possibilities. These offerings may well inspire readers to look at their own journeys and find something new about themselves. (Short stories. YA)