Source of Trouble

Winner of The Flannery O'Connor Award, this critically acclaimed debut collection features ten stories set in the plains of the Midwest and the honky-tonks of the South. This is a world where happiness is half heartache, dreams dwindle, and infidelity becomes just another way to extend the family. Characters search in vain for "the one incident you can zero down to as the source of trouble, and everything bad that happens after if happens because of it." Witty and sly, exciting and powerful, these are stories about people who understand their own complicity belatedly, but never too late. Illuminated in these affecting, self-revealing stories is the measure of hope and healing that lies in every heart and coupling, no matter the trespass.

Debra Monroe is the author of four books of fiction, and one memoir.  Her books have been widely reviewed and won many awards, including the Flannery O'Connor Award, the John Gardner Fellowship, The Violet Crown Award, the Quarterly West Novella Competition, and more. They have appeared on "Best Ten" lists in Elle magazine, the "Hot Type" list in Vanity Fair, as a "Recommended Reading" pick in O, the Oprah Magazine, and in Borders Bookstores' "Original Voices" series, and she has been nominated for the National Book Award twice.