Any Given Morning, We Cry In The Mirror — William Williamson

Any Given Morning, We Cry In The Mirror is a coming of age story set in the Florida Keys on a small island called Matecumbe. Henry Roberts wakes up in his bedroom the day after his sixteenth birthday realizing everything he has ever known in his life is changing forever.

Matecumbe is becoming commercialized, over-developed and over-crowded with a constant stream of tourists and new residents coming down every day. His family is splintered apart with his parents splitting up and his mother and brother moving to the mainland to live and the house he grew up in feels cold and barren for the steamy tropics, leaving him wishing his life could be different from the only life he has known.

Thinking back to where he was last night, he remembers what Gloria Colledge, the flirtatious wife of the only barber on the island told him two weeks before, that life can be hard and it can bury you or it can make a man out of you. When he hears voices out in the kitchen and gets up to make his breakfast, he is surprised to find his father, Jake, back after two months of shrimping in Key West sitting at the kitchen table with his mom who is only home to pack some things before she leaves again in a few days.

Henry's days become even more uncertain when ambulance sirens pierce the morning and they discover a block away, Gloria has been savagely assaulted the night before.