YOU CAN TELL ME ANYTHING

Themes of escape and longing ripple the calm surfaces of small Florida towns in this volume of short stories.

Like the howl of a faraway train whistle in the darkest hours of a small-town night, this thoughtful assemblage conjures up feelings of lonely goodbyes—and sometimes desperate escapes. In the collection’s first tale, “Welcome to Silver Springs, We Hate To See You Go,” a woman flees a lover who abuses their dog, but she is also escaping her oppressive hometown. Deep feelings are prevalent in these stories, and sometimes unattainable desire turns into dramatic fantasy. In “Mrs. Shiloh Sings to Her Dead Husband,” a lonely woman swears she saw a friend’s husband come back from the dead. And a mother helps her bullied son chase the mythical “chupacabra” beast in “Do You Believe?” Egnoski’s razor-sharp command of descriptive language is notable. Examining one small town, she writes: “Midway, population 2864, was as small as the period at the bottom of a question mark.” The multifaceted characters who inhabit these humid worlds are often societal outsiders—in “The Last Resort,” a low-income boy is determined to flee a special needs class. Lack of communication is also a difficulty. The title story focuses on a father quietly grappling with his teenage daughter’s abortion while he tends to a sick horse. Reflecting the struggles of the working class in an economic downturn, both the landscapes and the people are gloomy, with abandoned housing developments and men who have been on unemployment so long they “consider it a paycheck.” But the author offers plenty of hope-filled plot twists. For example, in “Veterans of a Foreign War,” a jilted wife finds solace at a VFW fish fry, and—in the soft, sexy final scene—she dances arm-in-arm with the woman who stole her husband.

Tales that present emotionally complex characters with empathy and insight.