Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publications where the following pieces first appeared, some in slightly different form:
American Fiction, Volume 11: The Best Previously Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Authors (Flood #1, Flood #2, Flood #4, Flood #5, Failure #5, Failure #7, Far-Flung Family #6, Drought #1, Drought #2, Drought #3, Drought #4, Drought #5, Drought #6, Drought #7, Apocalypse #3, Apocalypse #5, Apocalypse #6, Apocalypse #7);
Brooklyn College Magazine (Helen #4);
Electric Literature Outlet (Apocalypse #8);
Faultline (Flood #3, Fight #9, Bride #4, Wedding #3, Helen #1);
Hotel St. George online (Mistake #2, Monster #4);
The Hotel St. George Infinitely Expanding Library of New Fabulist Fiction (Fight #3, Wedding #2, Wedding #4, Wedding #6, Wife #7);
Opium Magazine online (Bride #1);
PEN America (We? #5, Fight #1, Fight #2, Bride #2, Bride #3, Wife #1, Wife #8, Punishment #4);
Salt Hill (Flood #6, Regime #1, Regime #2, Regime #3, Regime #4, Regime #5, Regime #6, Regime #7, Regime #8, Regime #9, Regime #10, Regime #11)
Small Spiral Notebook (Mother #1, Mother #2, Mother #4);
Sonora Review (Helen #8);
the author
Helen Phillips is the recipient of a 2009 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the 2009 Meridian Editors’ Prize, and the 2008 Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction. Her work has appeared in the Mississippi Review and PEN America, among others, and in the anthologies American Fiction: The Best Previously Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Authors and The Hotel St. George Infinitely Expanding Library of New Fabulist Fiction. A graduate of Yale and the Brooklyn College MFA program, she teaches creative writing at Brooklyn College. Originally from Colorado, Phillips lives in Brooklyn with her husband, artist Adam Thompson. Visit her website at www.helencphillips.com.
About the Type
This book was set in Adobe Caslon, a typeface originally released by William Caslon in 1722. His types became popular throughout Europe and the American colonies, and printer Benjamin Franklin used hardly any other typeface. The first printings of the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were set in Caslon. For her Caslon revival for Adobe, designer Carol Twombly studied specimen pages printed by William Caslon between 1734 and 1770.
Designed by John Taylor-Convery
Composed at JTC Imagineering, Santa Maria,CA
and yet they were happy © 2011 by Helen Phillips
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a data base or
other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means,
wise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A LeapLit Book
Leapfrog Literature
Published in 2011 in the United States by
Leapfrog Press LLC
PO Box 2110
Teaticket, MA 02536
www.leapfrogpress.com
Distributed in the United States by
Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
St. Paul, Minnesota 55114
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
eISBN : 978-0-979-64157-2
I. Title.
PS3616.H45565A83 2011
813’.6--dc22
2011003402