Spell Heaven

A lesbian couple moves to a gay-unfriendly coast town and unexpectedly finds a sense of belonging with a group of misfits in this modern collection of linked stories.

In Spell Heaven, a linked story collection, the narrator and her wife moved from the relatively safe confines of San Francisco to a gay-unfriendly neighborhood at the edge of the sea near Pacifica, California.

The narrator, raised in a working-class Croatian American fishing family and immigrant community, enjoys an early career in labor-oriented jobs. Years later, she finds herself in an academic position in a white-collar world, "where the clothes are clean and the politics are dirty."

 

Stories include the tale of an undocumented boy's drowning when a wave pulls him out to sea, an ex-FBI agent's surveillance of a man who leaves chocolate bars at a tree in a weekly ritual, a queer couple's move to a gay unfriendly neighborhood and their response to a local murder, a mother on meth who teaches a lesson on mercy and the story of Kite Man who flies kites from a fishing pole and sells drugs on the side. His motto: When they fly you can buy.



A modern story about a band of outsiders-not unlike characters found in Steinbeck's Cannery Row-and the queer female narrator drawn to the sea and their community, Spell Heaven is for readers who are looking for a human connection in today's increasingly isolated world. Toni Mirosevich was raised in a Croatian-American fishing family in Everett, Washington. She is the author of a book of nonfiction stories, Pink Harvest, winner of the First Series in Creative Nonfiction and five books of poetry. A professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University for many years she currently resides with her wife in Pacifica, CA.