Brothers, Fathers, and Other Strangers
(By Mitchell Waldman)
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| Author | Mitchell Waldman |
Also included is a series of stories about Hitler. These stories investigate Adolf in his garden, question what might have happened if he had emigrated to the States before..., or if, after...he were confronted after escaping his bunker to a South American jungle. And what would happen if a man (a Jewish dentist, no less) started seeing images and hearing voices addressed to him as if he were the very reincarnation of the monster himself?
And there are stories about people in work environments, the people you work with. In a series of stories about work and its effects on individuals, you may begin to wonder if really know your fellow workers like you thought you did. What are their secret stories, what effect does the corporate atmosphere have on them and their personal lives both in their working days and when their working days are suddenly ended?
You'll also find stories regarding how a moment suspended in time can change one’s life forever. And stories of people living lives of desperation and those desperately seeking better lives, looking for answers for what has happened to get them where they are.
In all there are 38 stories and flash fiction pieces in this collection, many of which have been published in literary magazines, such as Short Story Town,The MacGuffin, Down in the Dirt, Five Fishes Journal, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Random Sample, The Waterhouse Review, The Piker Press, Crack the Spine, Milk Sugar, Kairos Literary Magazine, Corvus Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Greensilk Journal, Fictive Dream, Litsnack, Spelk, Literally Stories, The Flash Fiction Press, The Fear of Monkeys, Crack the Spine, Baby Lawn Literature, Euonia Review, Writing Raw, The Legendary, Fiction on the Web, Furtive Dalliance, and Scarlet Leaf Review.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT BROTHERS, FATHERS, AND OTHER STRANGERS:
“Waldman has crafted a nuanced and engaging collection. His stories set us on an emotional tightrope, daring us to forgo a safety net, while seducing us to look down and discover who we are. Sometimes poignantly devastating, and other times savagely funny, he guides us through family trauma, corporate America, and faithful understanding to remind us if we can be less of a stranger to the world, maybe we can be less of a stranger to ourselves.” - Josh Penzone, author of The Court of Vintage Woods: Linked Stories
“Mitchell Waldman’s latest collection comes in three parts. First, there are stories of a blended family narrated by a stepbrother and stepson with either the urgency of a teen or the retrospection of an adult. They probe a fraught relationship with a stepbrother, detachment from a stepfather, and disengagement from a biological father. The narrator’s mother provides only a small measure of consolation from the bleakness. Taken together, these stories constitute an episodic novella working out permutations of awkwardness, disappointment, baffled love, and open resentment. Waldman persuasively renders the insecurities of his narrator and the pain of blended families that fail to blend. The style here is realistic while the second section leaves realism for a series of alternative biographies of Adolf Hitler—as an immigrant in Brooklyn, a local plumber, gardening with Fraulein Braun. In one story, Hitler occupies the consciousness of a Jewish dentist as he did Poland and France. Part Three is focused on the quiet desperation of economically marginalized, socially alienated, emotionally stunted males. Two main themes of this section are bad jobs and theodicy, the implacable actual and the dubious supernatural. The stories delve into the feelings and thoughts of alienated men, the kind of American males fulminating with resentment and teetering on the cusp of despair who have had much to do with our recent politics. Brothers, Fathers, and Other Strangers is remarkable for its scope, honesty, imagination, social sensitivity, and moral concern.”-- Robert Wexelblatt, author of The Thirteenth Studebaker, Hsi-wei Tales, etc.
“In Brothers, Fathers, and Other Strangers, Waldman explores masculinity, but not stereotypical masculinity. In these stories, you will see men battling their memories and emotions as they attempt to come to grips with their pasts and make a way for their lives. Waldman sets his work in reality with a dash of fantasy and the occasional twist ending. Waldman is doing something special in the short story form, and his stories will entertain, enlighten, and elate.”-- Hardy Jones, author of Resurrection of Childhood: A Memoir, and Every Bitter Thing”
