Day of the Dead and Other Stories
by Victoria A. Brownworth
Haworth Press. 190 pages, $14.95 (paper)
“FOG HAD ALWAYS held a dangerous allure for her. She was drawn to it, yet knew within its smeared edges and blurry recess there were things she didn’t want to see, things she shouldn’t see. She knew that the fog was the bridge, the hazy portal between the world of the living and the habitation of the dead.” This passage from a story, “Diary of a Drowning,” explains how a kind of representative character, a lesbian documentary filmmaker with an anxious lover in another city, has been seduced by New Orleans, and why she fails to escape in time to survive Hurricane Katrina.
This passage could also serve as an introduction to all seven of the dark tales in Victoria Brownworth’s latest collection of fiction.
