In the Event of Contact by Ethel Rohan eBook
Winner of the 2019 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize
In the Event of Contact chronicles characters profoundly affected by physical connection, or its lack. Among them, a scrappy teen vies to be the next Sherlock Holmes; an immigrant daughter must defend her decision to remain childless; a guilt-ridden woman is haunted by the disappearance of her childhood friend; a cantankerous crossing guard celebrates getting run over by a truck; an embattled priest with dementia determines to perform a heroic, redemptive act, if he can only remember how; and an aspirational, angst-ridden mother captains the skies.
Amidst backgrounds of trespass and absence, the indelible characters of In the Event of Contact seek renewed belief in themselves, recovery, and humanity.
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Also available in print
praise
"In this amazing collection, Ethel Rohan traces the determined spirit of the hopeful; how we seek to connect and anchor so as not to capsize in life's treacherous waves. What an elegant, telling, gorgeous book." ––Rene Denfeld, bestselling author of The Child Finder
"This collection couldn't be timelier or more essential. These characters long for connections that keep eluding them: they feel so much and yet can touch so little. Their tragedies and resilience are brilliantly various and individual--none alike, and none exactly like ours--but they speak to the universal through the particular as only art can manage. A tremendous achievement..” ––Clare Beams, author of The Illness Lesson
"Rohan’s stories are small electric shocks of discovery. Here, in a perfect dozen, she writes about how love and wonder can coexist right alongside betrayal, danger, rage. How can such a collection be both unsettling and redemptive? How can any of us tease out light in our darkness? Rohan’s alchemy points the way." ––Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and With or Without You
"In The Event of Contact is a remarkable collection of understated yet powerful stories about people who trespass, and are trespassed against. Rohan writes with such sensitivity and compassion, and long after I was done reading, I kept thinking about her characters and how uniquely she gave witness to their complicated lives and private pain.” ––Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of California
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ethel Rohan is the author of In the Event of Contact, winner of the Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize. Her debut novel The Weight of Him (St. Martin's Press and Atlantic Books, 2017) was an Amazon, Bustle, KOBO, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book, and was shortlisted for the Reading Women Award. She is also the author of the story collections Goodnight Nobody and Cut Through the Bone, the former longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the latter longlisted for the Story Prize. Her work has appeared widely, including The New York Times, World Literature Today, The Washington Post, PEN America, Tin House, Guernica, and more. Raised in Ireland, she lives in San Francisco where she is a member of the Writers Grotto.
