Short Story Collection Explores Something of Importance to All

By Rachel M. Anderson, Contributing Writer

(Minneapolis) – One of the biggest struggles many of us are facing these days is how to juggle family life and work in the age of Covid. The pandemic has thrown the rulebook out the door.

Gone are the days when barriers between home life and work were clear and easy to define. These days due to the lockdowns, family-friend bubbles, and economic struggles, we are all having to face new ways of connecting and disconnecting in work, love, and family life.

Exploring the nuances of relationships has been a fascination of Minneapolis writer Carol Dines for most of her life; and the timing of her latest book is no coincidence. Orison Books plans to release her new short story collection, This Distance We Call Love, in Aug. 2021.

“While none of the stories were inspired by the pandemic, they all explore aspects of relationships that are under scrutiny right now,” says Dines. “I wanted to write about the relationships that impact our lives most—what holds those relationships together or breaks them apart. I also wanted to examine that tension between the demands of relationships and the demand in ourselves to grow and become who we need to be.”

Told through the voices of mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, children and friends, the stories take their title, This Distance We Call Love, from the interwoven themes of connection and disconnection. While some relationships fall apart, others remain entrenched in old patterns, grappling with notions of self and duty. Altogether, the 13 stories in the collection delve deep into our changing world, revealing how the internet, climate change, violence, illness, aging and work impact our families, marriages, and friendships.

In the story titled “Almost,” Dines explores the relationship between two sisters, one of whom lives on the margins of society with mental illness and repeatedly turns to the other for financial help. The story examines how their relationship evolves and asks the question: what does one human being owe another in this life?

The story “Disappearances” unfolds in Italy during the father’s sabbatical. As the parents’ marriage shows signs of unraveling, the family goes on vacation and rents a house in an area recently devastated by avalanches. When the father disappears one afternoon, the daughter suspects he has left his family to have an affair with her best friend’s mother.

In “Sargasso Sea,” a mother and grown daughter take a trip to Mexico, only to be followed by the daughter’s stalker. The story explores what it means to parent grown children as the mother is forced to realize she no longer has the power to keep her daughter safe.

In “Ice Bells,” an adopted biracial daughter grapples with her mother’s terminal illness by turning to phone sex.

In “Grace’s Mask,” parents take different approaches to navigating their daughter’s violent behavior in reaction to her teacher’s zealous approach to teaching animal extinction.

Dines doesn’t shy away from writing about sex in marriage, either. “In Someone Less Perfect,” told from the husband’s perspective, she explores the frustrations of a stay-at-home dad who feels undermined by his wife who financially supports the family.

“Forgiveness,” also told from the husband’s perspective, explores how a middle-aged husband must transcend his own anger if he hopes to save his marriage after his wife’s affair.

In the final two connected stories, “This Distance We call Love” and “Under The Stars,” Dines explores the aftermath of a bicycle accident that kills a child. In the first story, the parents of the child grieve in separate ways, challenging their marriage. The second story is told in the voice of the young woman who caused the accident and reveals her own trauma as she begins to rebuild her own life in a new place. “Under The Stars,” explores how we leave our painful pasts and cultivate new lives.

Early reviews in for the collection have earned high praise. “The novelistic short stories in This Distance We Call Love ring devastatingly true in their portrayals of characters who are learning to reckon with persisting losses, fears, griefs, and needs. I have only rarely encountered short fiction that has this kind of visceral immediacy, so surprising at all turns,” said Kevin McIlvoy, author of One Kind Favor, At the Gate of All Wonder, 57 Octaves Below Middle C, and other works of fiction.

“Carol Dines is a merciless, tender excavator of the human heart. Fans of Lorrie Moore and Alice Munro take note, each of these stories is a delicately calibrated wonder of pain, joy and transformation,” said Adrian Van Young, author of The Man Who Noticed Everything and Shadows in Summerland, and other works of fiction.

“The foibles of human intimacy are writ large in these powerful stories where irony and empathy collide. Carol Dines is a writer for our times, delivering masterful, unsettling and utterly convincing fiction that reveals what is real and heartfelt with unflinching veracity. This Distance We Call Love addresses the universal need for human connection by considering new pathways for understanding and compassion,” said Patricia Cumbie, author of The Shape of a Hundred Hips and Where People Like Us Live.

Stories from this collection have been finalists in several contests and published in literary journals, including Ploughshares, Narrative, Colorado Review, Nimrod International, Salamander, Worcester Review, Stonecrop, and Willesden Herald. Orison Books plans the release of This Distance We Call Love in Aug. 2021. To learn more about author Carol Dines and her work, go to CarolDines.com.

About the Author

Carol Dines can trace her interest in writing back to childhood. “I’ve always kept diaries and journals, and even as a child reading was a huge part of my life.” But it wasn’t until after graduating from Stanford University that Dines decided to pursue the craft full time. She moved back to Minnesota and took classes at The Loft Literary Center. A year later, she entered graduate school in English at Colorado State University where she found her path as writer and teacher of writing.

Dines also writes for young adults. Her first young adult novel, Best Friends Tell The Best Lies, was runner-up for the Delacorte Press Prize. Her second book for young adults, Talk to Me, a collection of short stories, was reviewed in Voya as one of the top ten YA books of the year.

Her third book for young adults, The Queen’s Soprano, is an historical novel that takes place in Rome, Italy, where the author lived for eight years, dividing her time between Minneapolis and Rome. The novel is based on the true story of a talented young woman from a working-class family, who, under the protection of Queen Christina, defied the Pope’s ban on women singing.

Carol Dines’ 4th novel for Young Adults, The Take-Over Friend, was a finalist for the 2020 Acheven Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction, and will be published by Regal Press in 2022.

She is the recipient of the Judy Blume award and has received Minnesota and Wisconsin Artist Fellowships. For two decades she taught writing to all ages at public schools, universities, and colleges. Fifteen years ago, she stopped teaching to devote herself full-time to her writing.

When she’s not writing, she teaches yoga, paints watercolors, and walks or skis with her standard poodle around Minneapolis’s many lakes. Married to children’s fairy-tale scholar, Jack Zipes, she lives in Minneapolis.