Allison Pitinii Davis

Three novellas, Teresa Carmody's Today Must Be Sunday, Kim Chinquee’s I Thought of England, and Allison Pitinii Davis’s Business, unique in style and narrative, deal with longing, loneliness, fear, and the relationships their characters make, and break, on their way to something like peace, if not happiness. Entering and abandoning social contracts and expectations across the country in the pursuit of the somewhat ethereal notion of contentment, these stories highlight the struggles of women across American cultural eras, armed only with their ability to think and to act. These three novellas describe the harrowing, soul-rattling actions and choices made by women in the pursuit of defining their lives.

Two families immigrate to America’s Steel Valley and open a trucking motel and laundry. The businesses change hands through three generations as the region’s industry booms and busts. When the two disparate families become one, the new generation must examine what it means to endure in a place, a culture, a language, and a history. Line Study of a Motel Clerk examines a family’s century-long effort to make a home in a world on the move.