Out Stealing Water

When the city turns off her family’s water, seventeen-year-old Emily begins to understand why her uncle Dwight thinks the government should keep its hands off people’s lives, property, and the things they have a right to—such as water. Set in Phoenix, Arizona, in the summer of 2010, Out Stealing Water tells the story of Emily’s increasingly bold schemes to get enough money to leave Phoenix for good. She and her cousin, Paula, begin stealing. At first, it’s T-shirts and gym shorts from the university gym, but it soon escalates to stealing cell phones and IDs. When they accept an offer from the shady friend of her uncle Jay to steal suitcases from Sky Harbor Airport, they may have crossed a point of no return. Meanwhile, Dwight struggles to hang on to the family’s ramshackle two-acre property located in the heart of a rapidly growing university town by accepting help from an armed antigovernment group. In the wake of a tragic shootout, Emily has to choose: Stay in the place she calls home? Or find a new life for herself?

Roxanne Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Out Stealing Water is her first novel. Her short story, ("Turbulence," Ocotillo Review) was nominated for the 2019 Pushcart prize for short fiction. Other stories and poems have appeared in Superstition Review, Forge, I70 Review, Soundings Review, Four Chambers Literary Magazine, Lascaux Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature, NewVerseNews, Saranac Review, Gateway Review, and Reunion-The Dallas Review. Lascaux Review nominated one of her stories for the 2015 Million Writers Award.