Please Come Back To Me is another remarkable collection by an author the New York Times has called "a writer with an unsparing bent for the truth." In "The Nurse and the Black Lagoon" a woman tries to understand why her teenage son has been accused of a disturbing crime. In "Testimony" an adult daughter visiting her father does everything she can to keep herself from remembering what she believes she cannot bear. A man returns to his hometown in "Dear Nicole" to face the realization that he married the wrong woman out of misplaced guilt. "Oregon" portrays the internal struggle of a woman who, having years ago betrayed a secret entrusted to her by her best friend, is tempted to repeat the mistake with the same friend's daughter. And in the collection's novella, "Please Come Back To Me," a young widow seeks faith and comfort-in both natural and supernatural realms-after her husband's death leaves her alone to care for their infant son.
On the surface, Jessica Treadway's stories offer realistic portrayals of people in situations that make them question their roles as family members, their ability to do the right thing, and even their sanity. But Treadway's psychic landscapes are tinged with a sense of the surreal, inviting readers to recognize-as her characters do-that very little is actually as it seems.
"Most of Treadway's prose is clear and searingly direct. She tells her stories without flash or florid embellishments. But the little insights and illuminating details are all the more vivid in their spare dryness. Instead of telling us what the characters are feeling, she shows us."
Boston Globe
"To take honest stock of ourselves and to place our experience within the larger world, this is the task of the ideal writer, work that is made harder in a literary and political climate created to validate the experiences of certain numbers at the expense of excluding and denying even the existence of others of us. David Mura faces this challenge head-on and gives us a book that is essential read
Elizabeth Berg, author of The Last Time I Saw You
"In almost all of these stories, characters are presented with a chance to redeem themselves; some of them seize it, some do not. . . . Treadway is at her best when she depicts characters colliding with one another in the blind clutch of life, without anyone being particularly more at fault than another-when tragedy results from circumstances of misunderstanding and human weakness. . . . Treadway
