In this collection of short stories, the characters struggle to recover equilibrium in their lives that have been turned upside down. They struggle against one another, against change, and against the loss of loved ones. No matter what bonds hold the characters together, the underlying tension of change and reaction permeates their relationships and threatens what they know to be true. A theme of discontent runs in these stories. Something beneath the surface is not right, and the characters struggle to climb out of the mess their lives have become. Some of them have been stifled, like the narrator in "Resounding Gong, Clanging Cymbal," who's being pressured on all sides to marry. Some of them are toeing the line of fitting in and being independent, like the teenagers in "Hibiscus Boulevard," who, caught up in the last days of summer, are more concerned with being adults than being kids. In the title story, the teenagers in a small town find a way to memorialize one of their own by performing the act that caused him to die. The cautious bonds between the characters are continuously being worked by one another, by oppressive scenery and location, by the aftereffects of dysfunction, or by unrequited love. No matter what the context or situation, something is always just a little bit off, or wrong, in each story in this collection, and the characters must do their best to correct the situations.

Her Terrible Splendor is a poetry collection that transports the Greek witch-goddess Circe from her mythical island of Aeaea to modern-day East Texas, where I was raised. By locating Circe in the Piney Woods, I heighten the strangeness that I identify with that setting and open up new contexts for considering Circe as a woman, as an enchanter, and as figure of retelling and revision. Circe appears in an array of roles—friend, lover, mentor, alter-ego, muse—as the poems view her through different lenses, including ekphrastic responses to visual art, rewritings of myths, and "portrait" poems that cast people from the human speaker's life as the goddess herself. A powerful mythic woman who works alone and creates a haven for strange creatures and lost humans, Circe offers a way for the manuscript to consider the complex, multifaceted process of coming of age as a woman, self-making as myth-making.

Diamonds in the Rough is a dramatic coming-of-age novel, chronicling the experiences of college student Sofia Dayan. The intricacies of the Forty-Seventh Street diamond exchange are revealed during Sofia's time as an office assistant to a Hassidic diamond dealer, and she slowly discovers that her boss is involved in an illicit transaction concerning her father. Also coping with the symptoms of a newly diagnosed illness, rheumatoid arthritis, she begins a relationship with David Cohen - her father's former friend and business associate. Tensions build as Sofia manages her disease, attempts to strengthen her bond with David, and discovers what her father and boss are conspiring. Like a diamond, all the characters within the story are flawed beneath the surface and, to some degree, are living in illusions. Visual art and music enhance this primary theme; both often depict something beautiful but contain a darker subtext. / by Efrat Friedman. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web. FboU

A collection of short stories and one novella featuring women’s issues, fairy tales, a coming-of-age story, and a pregnancy that turns out differently than expected upon delivery.

Tundra is a murder mystery/coming-of-age novel about a fifteen-year-old boy named Ethan and his high school biology teacher, Pam, who come together over a mysterious text-based video game and unwittingly use it to resolve an unsolved murder from 1994. The novel is largely interested in bodies—their perplexities, pleasures, and limitations—as well as what it means to “come of age” as a queer person in a time and place where queer folks are denied so many markers of adulthood—marriage, families, oftentimes job and housing security. This is also a book about the myriad of ways in which technology enables us to pursue modes of connection and intimacy outside of the limitations of both our bodies and repressive social strictures. This thesis contains the first seven chapters of the novel, constituting Part One.

This story suite is a work of autobiographical fiction, a coming of age tale which uses a young girl’s relationship to horses—along with various people and places connected to the horse world—as its narrative theme. The collection is comprised of twelve chapters, including an Introduction and Prologue and much later, an Interlude and Conclusion. While the first person narrative voice is maintained through most of the chapters herein, the Interlude uses second-person perspective. Additionally, NOW DEPARTING is written in the present narrative tense. Poems are interspersed throughout the work, between chapters, as transitional bridges for the reader.

These collected stories are a narrative exploration of a collective life in middle‐class suburbia. Here the reader is introduced to a troop of characters who share a community but yet they are adrift in the atmosphere between identity and memory. At times, as in “When to Lie” and “Afraid of the Question” we see conflict arise when the suburban religious dogma alters character identity, leaving behind haunting memories and scar tissue. Memory and identification play an important roll when, as in “Rx” the protagonist is faced with the sudden loss of his family as he struggles to keep their memories alive—without their memory he is no longer a father or a husband. Whether the characters are looking to re‐engage in society after being done wrong, as is the case in “Playing the Game” or coming to terms with sudden loss, afflicting memories play an important role in each narrative.

HUNGER: ESSAYS is a collection of lyric essays that present the coming-of-age story of a young woman growing up in a Panamanian family where identity is defined by patriarchal notions of femininity (e.g., physical appearances) and economically-oriented career aspirations. In an attempt to fit into this family rather than explore her difference, the narrator undergoes psychological trauma that results in anorexia during her young adulthood. As she works towards healing, the narrator grapples with Western dichotomies of body and mind in an effort to become a more integrated self.

During the long, dark night of a volcanic winter, a young man clashes with his father over the fate of five desperate survivors who have arrived outside the gates of the family compound. Yet he soon discovers true darkness lies within.

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