Flashlight Girls Run

In the ten prize-winning stories that make up Flashlight Girls Run, we are propelled into new millennium America as the 20th century implodes, and the first decade of the 21st century explodes. Rendered in a swarming lyricism, Dickinson’s characters, most of whom identify as young women, have already survived great traumas or are in the midst of a life-altering event that changes everything: Jesusita, who walks a tightrope between her husband blinded in Iraq and her father-in-law who has fallen in love with her; Bonnie and Nick, who are haunted by Afghanistan’s Korangal Valley and the illusive snow leopard who makes its home in the remote rocks above the nightmarish fighting; and Bethany, an Iowa girl home from her deployment and missing her left arm, who visits the Wee Blue Inn and sees her first love Moses sitting at the bar. In this collection, written in flames and with an eye cocked to the fierce, beautiful blue sky, there’s always the possibility of redemption and rising again. Flashlight Girls Run celebrates darkly the music and miracle of being alive.