Esther Stories (19 page)

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Copyright © 2001 by Peter Orner
Foreword copyright © 2013 by Marilynne Robinson
Cover design by Kapo Ng
Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes),
prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
littlebrown.com
twitter.com/littlebrown
facebook.com/littlebrownandcompany

Originally published by Mariner Books, November 2001
First ebook edition: April 2013

The author gratefully acknowledges the editors of the following publications, where some of these stories first appeared in slightly different form:
Atlantic Monthly
(“The Raft”);
Atlantic Unbound
(“The House on Lunt Avenue”);
Confrontation
(“Daughters”);
Cream City Review
(“Country Road G” and “At the Motel Rainbow”);
Denver Quarterly
(“In the Walls”);
Epoch
(“Shoe Story” and “Providence”);
North American Review
(“Cousin Tuck’s,” “Sitting Theodore,” and “Two Poes”);
Passages North
(“Papa Gino’s”);
Michigan Quarterly Review
(“Walt Kaplan Reads
Hiroshima,
March 1947”);
Oxford Review
(“Thumbs”);
Southern Review
(“Melba Kuperschmid Returns” and “Initials Etched on a Dining-Room Table, Lockeport, Nova Scotia”);
Yankee
(“Awnings, Bedspreads, Combed Yarns”). “In the Walls” also appeared in a limited-edition collection called
Seep
(Sierras Press, 1998). “The Raft” was reprinted in
The Best American Short Stories 2001
and “Melba Kuperschmid Returns” in
The Pushcart Prize XXVI.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

ISBN: 978-0-316-22469-7