Keeping What's Best Left Kept Secret

FINALIST, Traditional Fiction, Chicago Writers Association Awards (2025)

An epidemic's emotional strain drives among victims a stoic resolve to conceal their disability. A mother retreats inside herself, disarmed by the steps of a building she sees. A neighbor's drooping, palsied cheek belies the expression on the other cheek. A father conceals that he cannot read, and a son struggles with crippling guilt, having been acquitted of a crime he did commit. Stirring and elegant, Keeping What's Best Left Kept Secret probes the force of untold secrets on the daily business of making do. In these stories, David Ricchiute uncovers deception teeming with self-deception, and the final returns have much to do with the accidental chemistry of fate.

David Ricchiute is the author of two poetry collections, Uncertain in the Worst Way (2020) and So Everyone Else Will Know (2018). His writing has appeared in NOON, The Massachusetts Review, The Louisville Review, and Tampa Review, among others. Born in Rhode Island, he lives in Granger, Indiana, and Villa Hills, Kentucky.