An Unobstructed View: Short Fiction — Mark McNease

The stories in An Unobstructed View unfold through the simple gestures of day to day life in a small town of eight million people. There's the receptionist wondering why God has stopped listening to her; a child searching for a father who had been there just minutes before; a woman pressured to change her life by a cat in a neighbor's window; a man questioning the value of his life as it abruptly ends. Moments in time that are arrived at through the journeys of lifetimes.

These eleven stories speak to the common experiences we all share -growing up, growing older, getting on with life as best we can, never giving up hope. The characters we meet on a street corner in Manhattan or in an apartment in Queens, are characters we could as easily meet on any given day in our own lives wherever we live. Characters with heart, with longing, with fears, with dreams. The very people we love. The people we recognize when we look in the mirror. At their best, the stories in this volume provide us with an unobstructed view into ourselves.