One Thing That Can Save Us

This remarkable collection of stories uses the everyday stuff of living—daily lust and minor losses, unpaid bills and broken plumbing—as a point of departure for darker inquiry.

A subtle pathos and hidden anguish underlie these stories of an average American life. One Thing That Can Save Us is for everyone who has learned that even “the good life” is inhabited by inevitable failures, sadnesses, and doubt: struggles over money, problems with children, emptiness, ambiguity, ex-spouses, war, injustice, and leaky faucets.

With a wistful yet urgent lyricism and a delightful sense of absurdity, One Thing That Can Save Us continues the Coffee-To-Go Short-Short Story Series with literature that transcends brevity to resonate in the reader’s mind.

Barry Silesky is a Minneapolis-native poet, biographer, and non-fiction writer. He moved to Chicago where he studied for a BA from Northwestern University and an MA from the University of Illinois.