Hale ma’Uma’U Caldera, Hawaii Volcanoes National Monument, Big Island, Hawaii
This story forces its way from a magazine and nearly strangles with its precision, mugging readers with its despair.
Even if you think you know grief, you have never uttered it or written it or read it like this. So many other versions of loss ooze hundreds of gallons of blood and buckets of tears. This story is not loud, but its mournful wail fills you.
The effect is like death to a witness: A whooshing rush, stabbing pain, and then sudden flight in the talons of great winged euphoria.
*Write a tiny review, in fewer than one-hundred words, that focuses on the effect of a piece rather than the plot or message. Give a sense of your criteria. (I insist creative writing students avoid bathing readers in vats of blood and buckets of tears.)
shewhodaresnothing 