A novella in stories, these ten powerful and gritty, interlinked tales take readers inside an impoverished, drug-ridden central Florida neighborhood where the Collins family lives. The three children are being raised by their bartender mother while their father is in prison. The angry oldest son Phillip bullies his siblings-Daniel, who likes to try on his mama's clothes and lipstick, and little sister Tammy, wise beyond her years. Tammy has a crush on Angelo, a boy across the street whose multi-generation Puerto Rican family provides a contrast with the dysfunctional Collinses. Their next-door neighbor Marsha is both caretaker and predator. They are all hiding secrets from each other, yet despite cruelty and bullying, are loyal to their own. Emily Hoover's fiction has most recently appeared in Gravel and BULL. Her short story "Angelo Loves Tammy" was nominated for 2018's "Best of the Net" Anthology and her short story "Nothing to Light Our Way" won honorable mention in Madville's 2019 Runaway Stories contest. Her poems "Cuscuta denticulata" and "My Mother as a Serrano Pepper" were chosen as runners-up in Waxing & Waning's 2020 Tennessee Tempest Editon. Emily's book reviews have been published by The Los Angeles Review, Necessary Fiction, Ploughshares blog, The Rupture, and others. She is a Lecturer of English at Nevada State College.
