Frost Heaves

In southern Vermont, the annual freezing and thawing of the earth forces stones to the surface, breaking asphalt, disrupting civilized life. This is the setting for the stories in Frost Heaves, a physically harsh and rural place within a few hours’ drive of Boston and New York. It is a landscape where retreat, even escape, to a quaint and bucolic lifestyle is regularly upset by reminders that a human is, in the end, another part of the natural world and a part of a larger social organism. In this collection, an eclectic mix of characters interact, negotiate community, and encounter the natural world—bears, otters, moose, insects—in confrontations with the reality of their own individual strengths and weaknesses, the welling up of hard truths in the seasons of each life.

T. Stores of Putney, Vermont T Stores is the author of three novels (Getting to the Point, SideTracks, and Backslide) and a collection of short fiction, Frost Heaves, forthcoming from Green Writers’ Press. Her work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Harrington Literary Quarterly, Rock & Sling, Cicada, Out Magazine, Blithe House, Oregon Literary Review,Bloom Magazine, Rock & Sling, Earth’s Daughters,Blueline, SawPalm,Kudzu, Fourth Genre and Minerva Rising, among others. Honors include grants from the Vermont Arts Council and Barbara Deming Fund, residencies at Bread Loaf, Squaw Valley, and Shiro Oni, and a Pushcart Prize nomination. A graduate of the M.F.A. program at Emerson College, she is Associate Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Hartford.