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House Parties by Lynn Levin

Review by Regina Guarino

House Parties is the debut short story collection of Lynn Levin, an established poet and English faculty member at Drexel University. In this 443-page collection, each of the 20 stories tell of the ordinary lives of ordinary people in search of connection. In her poetic use of language and her tender execution of character, Levin shines with her appreciation of our common humanity.

Her use of beautiful syntax, images, and metaphors elevates the tone of these masterful glimpses into character’s lives. Poetry shines through the stories, in lines that live in the imagination and beyond the page. Descriptions delight the senses and convey the beauty of humanity through the beauty of language.

In Little Secrets an English instructor yearns to reconnect with her former poet/professor lover, describing their relationship “as split and withered as a dead squash vine, and he would come to trample on its remains.” With stunning irony, the story ends, that connection dead despite her best attempts, but with another blooming.

Baby and Gorilla presents the story of a former addict with a criminal record, working in a gorilla costume, meeting a teen mom “bug-eyed, jumpier than a grasshopper, high as the moon.” Her voice is “hot with menace. Her gaze is like the muzzle of a gun.” Yet, in another ironic ending, this encounter becomes the one in which the gorilla-costumed man finds connection.

The Dirty Martini is a memorable story of a middle-aged man who seeks respite from the boredom and resentment he feels in career and marriage. Following the lead of a roguish colleague, the man makes one bad decision after another and runs into predictable trouble after predictable trouble. Because of Levin’s nimbleness in drawing motivation of the man, his wife, and his friend, we feel sympathy for him, as he seeks to fulfill his need for humanity in a self-defeating manner.

The lonely rabbinical student in Frieda and Her Golem seeks connection even as she guards her solitude. She learns how to imbue a substance like river clay or ground meat with life and creates a helpmeet to fulfill her need for a partner. Ironically, the Golem develops more and more the ability to relate to people out in the world, something Frieda herself cannot manage.  Finally, when the Golem takes on a mind of her own, Frieda must take drastic action.

Evermay Blair tells the story a teacher, so wrecked with guilt that he becomes ill and changes his lifestyle. He says, “A storm of blackbirds banged inside my head.” Yet the connection he needs, with his conscience, with another human being eludes him. Levin’s skillful narration evokes tenderness in our hearts for him.

Each story in this collection makes a fascinating read. The characters make decisions they know to be not quite right, yet they are compelled to do so anyway. In the end there comes no happy ending for them. But there is a gentle landing.  And, by the end of the collection, for the reader a profound appreciation of human nature.

Lynn Levin is a poet and writer. She is the author of nine books, most recently, her debut collection of short stories House Parties (2023). Widely published as a poet, Levin’s five poetry collections include The Minor Virtues (2020); Miss Plastique (2013), a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; Fair Creatures of an Hour (2009), a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; Imaginarium (2005), a finalist for Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award; and A Few Questions about Paradise (2000). She is co-author, with Valerie Fox, of Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (2019, 2013), a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in writing/publishing. She is the translator, from the Spanish, of Birds on the Kiswar Tree (2014), poems by the Peruvian Andean poet Odi Gonzales. Levin is also the producer/director of the 2017 video documentary Life on the Napo River: A Glimpse of the Ecuadoran Amazon, Its People, and Their Traditions.

Regina Guarino (left) is a writer with an MFA from Drexel University. She formerly studied linguistics and instructed learners of English as a second language. She lives in Delaware with her cute dog, Chipita. Her interests include languages and cultures, gardening, and herbal remedies.

One Day I Am A Field by Amy Small-McKinney

Review By Margaret R. Sáraco

Author Amy Small-McKinney wastes no time inviting us to enter a world of grief as she accompanies her husband on a journey who has been living with dementia. The poet is a consummate storyteller. Most of the poems are set in and around their home and medical facilities and the timeframe is during the pandemic in 2020. Therefore, their ability to move about is limited, which affects their lives greatly because of the anxiety of living in uncertain times, in addition to her husband’s illness. She dedicates One Day I Am A Field to Russ’ memory, who sadly dies of Covid. While Small-McKinney is losing her husband, the reader becomes an observer. Their story unfolds in ordinary places where extraordinary things are occurring in a sensitive landscape. Throughout the collection, she remembers for herself first and then for her husband.

In her opening poem, “The Doctor Said We Need to Return In Two Months After Further Testing Including Bloodwork,” she writes, “How do I mourn a husband who sits beside me?/Who cannot remember.” Feelings range from love and care to fear, frustration, and despair. It is in this space the poet finds grief, patience and sometimes encounters regret.  In “During The Pandemic You Are Dying At Home,” her use of repetition emphasizes what the illness means for both, their isolation littered throughout the book. We venture with husband and wife down an unflinching road.

This is not the life I planned.

Now the sky closes its doors and trees shrink

into fetal positions. Your body shrinks.

You forget where you are where

you are going. Your hospital bed tries to explain:
You don’t belong anymore.

This is not the life we planned.

We are breezeless our window won’t open.

She moves from “This is not the life I planned” to “This is not the life we planned” recognizing the I and we in their relationship moving the reader along towards their final goodbyes.

Many of her images and metaphors are startling and beautiful. In “Clematis Vitalba,” a reference to the familiar climbing flowery vine, known as “old man’s beard” or as Small-McKinney references, “Traveller’s Joy” ushers in much more than flowery thoughts.

I want to bury myself inside the dark. Stand aside

invented light. While the world falls apart,

my husband’s brain swells with lakes.

Small-McKinney’s artistic prowess is apparent throughout her book. Not only does she express her day-to-day struggles, and her husband’s, but does so while wielding and winding language to fit her experiences and then in her work embodies the love and care of someone who is slowly fading away.  “My husband’s brain swells with lakes” is a remarkable line that lingers even as you move to the next page, the next poem and long after the book is read. And, yes, to articulate one’s deepest emotions is what poets do, but it is not a simple task. One could hope for the author it might be healing, and helpful to those who will or have walked similar paths. The poet uses her words like a fluid conduit of thought and sentiment which might makes the reader imagine these poems may have written themselves. For instance, in “Noir” McKinney makes a leap from memories of her mother who confesses, “I didn’t hold you enough, uncomfortable with touch” to the writer’s desires concerning her daughter:

When my daughter was born, I held her

as a cloud holds on to rain as long as it can

Later in the same poem, she brings us into a reflection with her husband, sounding a seed of regret and connecting the dots between the generations. There is never enough time, and her realization is poignant with the line, “I don’t hold him enough.”

And since skin on skin breaks open all sorrow—

no—a turning away or fear of becoming

him, I don’t hold him enough.

The poet’s transition moving away from him as he grows more ill, is heart wrenching and honest. In “Devotion” she tells the reader of how life used to be. These thoughts and ideas are relatable to those who have experienced grief. Her careful spacing leaves emptiness where something existed before.

Our daughter was born just before my body closed. Her father wore face paint—

characters in plays they acted out together. Danced in the living room to Springsteen,

feet on feet.                             How it was.

Last night I moved into          became a guest in my own life.

A stranger, no longer my home.

About a third of the way into her book, Small-McKinney includes seven poems with similar titles. Five are called “Grief,” another “A Woman Named Grief” but it is her poem, “Grief: Two Parts” in which the poet comes to terms with her husband who is almost gone and then gone within the confines of the poem. And there are additional spaces for grief in much of her work. In the title poem of the collection, “One Day I Am A Field.” She writes,

What is remembered when blinded?

Try to wake to the sun’s flash of denial.

The problem: I am grief’s land.

One Day I Am A Field is a book where heart and poet meet with profound insight on what is it like to be a caregiver to someone you love, losing them one poem at a time. The love she expresses makes the going that much harder, but the reader will feel richer from having shared Small-McKinney’s experience.

Amy Small-McKinney is the author of two full-length books and three chapbooks. Her newest chapbook, One Day I Am A Field, was published by Glass Lyre Press (April,2022). Her second full-length book of poems, Walking Toward Cranes, won the Kithara Book Prize (Glass Lyre Press, 2016). Small-McKinney’s poems also appear in several anthologies, for example, Rumors, Secrets, & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion, & Choice (Anhinga Press, 2023). In 2019, her poem “Birthplace” received Special Merits recognition by The Comstock Review for their Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest, judged by poet, David Kirby, and again, in 2021 for her poem, “Bench, Ducks, & Inn,” judged by poet, Juan Felipe Herrera. On 10/2/23, her poem “Love/Furious” appeared in Verse Daily. Her poems have also been translated into Korean and Romanian. Her book reviews have appeared in journals, such as Prairie Schooner, Philadelphia Stories, and Matter. Small-McKinney has a degree in Clinical Neuropsychology from Drexel University and an MFA in Poetry from Drew University. She resides in Philadelphia, where she has taught community poetry workshops, both privately and as part of conferences, as well as independent students.

Margaret R. Sáraco (left) writes about love, family, politics, and nature. A poet, short story, and memoir writer, she grew up in New York and lives in New Jersey. Margaret began her professional writing career as a magazine columnist writing about feminism, music, health, and contemporary events. Her writing has appeared in many anthologies and journals. Margaret’s poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and twice received Honorable Mentions in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Her debut poetry collection, If There Is No Wind (Human Error Publishing, 2022) is available where books are sold. Even the Dog Was Quiet will be published in the Fall 2023.

Dwell Here and Prosper by Chris Eagle

Review by Samantha Neugebauer

At eighteen, while a first-year student at Villanova, Chris Eagle became the primary caregiver for his father, Dick Eagle, after he suffered a stroke in his Delco home. Permanently disabled, Dick tried a “ludicrous version of independent living” before accepting that he needed to enter an assisted living facility. Last spring – nearly twenty years later – Tortoise Books published Dwell Here and Prosper, Chris’s debut novel inspired by the many diaries his late father kept during that multi-year period.

In terms of point of view, Dwell Here and Prosper diverge in two important ways from recent autofiction titles. First, the author himself is not the novel’s main character or narrator; it’s Chris writing in Dick’s voice. Secondly, as Chris explains it in the novel’s introduction, narrator, Dick, is not exactly his father:

“My narrator Dick is not Dick Eagle in any simplistic or straightforward sense. Pieces of Dick’s backstory come from other residents. Dad crossed with three or four or five guys I met walking the halls of his building, sitting outside in the yard with him. Dick is a common type of man you meet in assisted livings…”

Still, the novel begins with both the aforementioned introduction (by Chris) and a preface (by Dick), situating the story in a sort of memoiristic haze. Nevertheless, once chapter one gets rolling, the most absorbing features of social realistic fiction are in full swing. Dick is wiry and honest, with a dark sense of humor about the absurdities and negligence that goes on in the various dysfunctional facilities he stays at. He’s also extremely observant making his world and its characters come to life through the tiniest bodily details and habitual mannerisms: nurses with “their purses swinging from their chubby elbows,” a flight of pigeons who “divebomb straight to any spot where the sense food’s been dropped,” and a night nurse “whose complexion is seal-gray and strangely moist as if he rubs petroleum jelly on his face when no one’s looking.” At times, Dick can be comical and hopeful about his condition. The novel begins by Dick telling us that he is working toward getting out of the assisted living, and yet, poignantly, he also admits later:

“In lieu of sheep, lately, I’ve gotten in this unwise habit of counting all the two-handed activities I’ll likely never do again: tie my shoelaces, putt, butter bread, drive a car, cut a steak, fondle two tits at the same time. The stroke struck two years ago last Friday. Arm’s a worse conundrum than the leg. I’ve tried a thousand times, but I can’t figure out how I could manage on my own with only the one functioning hand.”

Throughout the book, readers may wonder why Dick’s fellow residents stay at these facilities, especially those who are on the younger side and seem healthy enough. Dick wonders this too, and his curiosity leads him to many discoveries about the complexities of human nature and mental illness. In one case, after a period of quasi-investigative journalism, Dick befriends “The Thinker,” a forty-two-year-old former professor and Penn graduate who stands out from the other residents because he always has his nose in a book. The Thinker’s room is full of stacks of books and also, oddly, a one-armed mannequin from Wannamaker’s dumpster.

The Thinker also keeps notebooks with extensive (“walls of tiny words”)  – “Amphitryon: harassing both sides (Greek)…Umbrageous: offering shade, easily offended…,” which Dick tries to make sense of. Finally, Dick asks The Thinker why he stays, and The Thinker explains that the situation “buys him twenty-thirty years…of reading. Writing.” On the one hand, it’s a fascinating assertion because the professor is right: assisted living is a situation that gives him nearly infinite time to do what he loves most.

Like other institution-based stories, such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Girl, Interrupted,  Dwell Here and Prosper has plenty of quotidian descriptions of the nuts and bolts of assisted living life from the cuisine to medicine distribution to the ways in which residents barter and bride for extra cigarettes. Cigarettes are a ubiquitous feature of Eagle’s novel, in ways comparable to how the cigarette was its own kind of character and cultural signifier in Mad Men. In the preface, Dick mentions that he and his son had considered naming the book Butt. In truth, the power and presence of the cigarette in the novel says as much about the residents of the facility as it does about the novel’s mid-nineties setting. While there are many other markers of the time period, such as certain expressions and ways of talking and the triumphs and losses of local Philly sports teams, the omnipresence of the cigarette adds authentic sensory fabric to Dick’s accounts of the last century. The cigarette was already on its way out and becoming less socially acceptable by the mid-nineties, yet it wasn’t completely gone from mainstream society either. Nevertheless, smoking was– and still is–most prevalent among those on society’s margins, like the misfits, outcasts, poor, and ill who populate Dwell Here and Prosper. Some residents smoke through their weekly cigarette allotment right away, while others, like The Thinker, show “discipline” by allowing himself only three cigarettes a day. In depicting each resident’s personal relationship with the cigarette, we learn something about each resident’s relationship with time itself, too.

Reading this book, I was reminded of essayist Freddie deBoer’s observation that “we’ve built a society where there are more ways to be a loser than a winner.” ‘Loser’ is a harsh word but a fitting one to describe the way most of society views the residents of Dick’s assisted living facility. Although Dick makes the most of his situation, in no way is the assisted living facility existence one to envy. In fact, Dick’s mind is saved partially because he finds a purpose in writing and recording the details of his experience. While this is admirable, it also speaks to  deBoer’s point because part of his argument is that “the arts” are one of the other ways not to be a “loser.” Everyone in the facility can’t be like Dick, or even if they could, they might not have the talent or temperament for it.

An assisted living facility is a specific kind of purgatory; by definition, it’s a place for people who require full-time help but not enough to be in a nursing home. In his novel, Chris Eagle is both honoring his father’s memory and throwing light on the state of these facilities, which share characteristics with our psychiatric hospitals, but are not exactly the same. Without being didactic, it’s clear the author believes that these residents deserve more options for happiness and inclusion in society. These days, Chris Eagle lives in Atlanta, where he is a professor of Health Humanities at Emory University. It’s easy to imagine how the experience with his father might have inspired his academic – as well as his creative – interests. Lucky for us, Eagle is also working on a collection of short stories set in Delco.

Chris Eagle is the author of Dwell Here and Prosper (Tortoise Books, 2023), a novel based on the diary his father kept while recovering from a stroke in a highly dysfunctional assisted living facility  in southeastern Pennsylvania. His short stories have also appeared in AGNI, Louisiana Literature, and Sortes. Originally from Delco PA, Chris has lived in Berkeley, Paris, Antwerp, Pasadena, Sydney, Berlin, Chicago, and Atlanta. He now lives back in Delco, where he is currently at work on a short story collection set in his hometown.Chris Eagle received his Ph.D. in English Literature from UC Berkeley in 2009. He taught at Caltech, Western Sydney University, DePaul University, Loyola Chicago, and Emory University before retiring from academia in 2024. He is a former Fulbright scholar, Chateaubriand scholar, and Mellon fellow. His areas of research include Health Humanities, Disability Studies, Bioethics, Trauma Studies, and the field of Dysfluency Studies which he helped to found with his monograph Dysfluencies and his edited collection Talking Normal.

Reviewer: Raised in Northeast Philadelphia, Samantha Neugebauer now lives in Washington, D.C., where she is a research assistant at Georgetown University and Georgetown University in Qatar. Previously, she taught at Johns Hopkins and NYU in Abu Dhabi. Learn more about Samantha at her website: samanthaneugebauer.com.

Rainbow Tales by Kathleen Murphey

Review by Rosalind Kaplan

This time there really is something new under the summer sun. Rainbow Tales by Kathleen Murphy is a collection of stories based on traditional fairy tales and folklore, but each with a refreshing and surprising twist. Rather than suffer derision and isolation for their diversity, gender roles, gender identity, and sexual orientation, characters of old folk tales are flipped on their heads and rewarded for authenticity, happiness, community, and family.

The book begins with a story entitled ‘Beau and the Beast’.  A prince, very handsome but lacking kindness and humility, is transformed into a hideous beast by a fairy queen. He is saved by the compassion of an old woman. In his beastly form, he can experience her inner beauty, and it assuages his loneliness.  He then befriends the hag’s(the old woman’s) grandson, Beau, and the friendship deepens into romantic love and sexual attraction as the grandson, in turn, is able to see the beast’s inner beauty.  Beau’s love restores the prince to his human form but with new compassion.  The couple is accepted by the older woman, the king, and the ‘queen’ and live happily ever after.

Throughout this, and other stories in Rainbow Tales, we encounter well-rendered, complex characters, including a transgender prince in love with a frog, a non-binary P. Pan, whose quest is to help marginalized, neglected, and abused children, and a Snow White who falls in love with Sleeping Beauty when the latter’s family offers her shelter as she flees execution by a jealous queen.

The overall effect of the collection of stories is refreshing and hopeful, as the stories upend not only the obvious sexist, racist, and homophobic tropes of standard fairy tales but also call attention to the more subtle disparities these old tales espouse.  In Murphey’s long-ago-far-away world, stepmothers are often kind.  A prince or princess might choose to assist the servants in the kitchen.  Magic mirrors are used to help those in need, fairies have private lives, and royalty has a broad range of skin tones.

These newly crafted fairy and folk tales open up the genre at a crucial time in history, a time when we can no longer overlook the harmful stereotypes and biases of many classic tales. These revised versions bring new relevance to old lore while continuing to capture the charm and magic of the fairy world.

Rainbow Tales is not a collection aimed at children, however. Known as a sex-positive author, Murphey includes descriptions of sexual encounters and sex acts in her narratives, rendering Rainbow Tales a book for mature audiences. While the explicit nature of these passages is not necessary to the storylines themselves, the depiction of inclusive, physical intimacy may be psychologically helpful and even life-saving for some readers. The transformation of classic fairy tales and folklore to reflect modern values is not a new concept in itself.  In fact, many stories have evolved throughout the centuries; intercultural elements have been added, and feminist perspectives have emerged (think of the powerful female protagonist Elsa in Frozen). With thousands of traditional international fold tales out there, this collection is a welcome addition, set apart by the breadth of diversity depicted as well as its sex-positivity.

Kathleen Murphey teaches composition and literature courses in the English and Humanities Departments at Community College of Philadelphia.  She has a Ph.D. in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania.  She has presented conference papers on the masculinization of female sexuality in popular culture.  Examples include “The Porning of High Medieval Fantasy:  George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire Series” and “Fifty Shades of Creep:  Yet Another Masculinization of Female Sexuality.”  Recently, she has started creating fiction (poetry and fiction) trying to give voice to more empowered visions of female and diverse sexualities.  Some of her poems have been published through The Voices Project and Writing in a Woman’s Voice.  She has three collections of alternative fairy tales, Other Tales and Rainbow Tales (published by JMS Books).  Beyond the Witch is an evolving collection of unpublished fairy tales. She is married and has three lovely daughters who are becoming young women right before her eyes.

Rosalind Kaplan (left) has been published in several literary and medical journals, including Across the Margin, Brandeis Magazine, Eastern Iowa Review, El Portal, Galway Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Signal Mountain Review, The Smart Set, Stonecoast Review, Sweet Tree, and Vagabond City. Her memoir Still Healing: A Doctor’s Notes on the Magic and Misery of a Life in Medicine was selected as the winner of the Minerva Rising 2022 memoir contest and is forthcoming in the fall of 2024.

Doctor Spight by L.M. Asta

Review By: Mary Evangelisto Miller

Dr. Drew Spight, an obstetrics and gynecology attending at St. Thomas Medical Center in Philadelphia, wanted to escape. He had had enough of St. Thomas; the OB (“Old Bastard,” aka Dr. Owen Bates), his supervisor; being his mother’s caregiver as her multiple sclerosis progressed; and, most of all, “the aura of failure that clung to him like tobacco smoke.” His traditional method of escape was something else he desperately wanted to leave behind, after it led to a severe traffic accident, substantial injuries, a hospital stay that revealed his ongoing problem through toxicology reports, and forced membership in the “Physician Wellness Committee,” along with mandated drug testing.

Repeated calls from a former colleague to join him out west provided just that means of escape. Trading one coast for another, moving from a busy inner-city hospital to a private surgicenter providing cosmetic procedures to women in Los Angeles, seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. As Dr. Eric Xavier told Drew: “You tighten this, you tighten that, and the best thing of all, it’s all self-pay.” Repeated reprimands of Dr. Xavier over the years for infractions ranging from negligence to incompetence to inappropriate behavior with female patients and staff, with resultant probation and threats of license revocation, gave Drew pause, but as the pressures in Philly mounted, the call of the west became insurmountable. Even the OB’s last-minute attempt to entice Drew to remain in Philly with the promise of promoting him to chair of the department could not keep Drew at St. Thomas.

Drew wanted to leave many aspects of his old life behind, particularly his long history of substance abuse. Was placing 2,700 miles between his old life and a new one the answer? Would he be satisfied with performing G-spot enhancement and mommy makeover procedures instead of complex, lifesaving obstetric and gynecologic surgery? Adding to the complexity of the situation, revelations about institutional and political irregularities at both Drew’s previous and new environments begin to emerge, leading to further entanglements. Drew’s reunion with his friend Dr. Lakshmi Rangwala at a convention in Los Angeles, as well as his new involvement with Edie Mitchell, a patient-cum-investigational journalist, lead to more questions—ones that only Drew and his coterie can unravel.

The story of Dr. Spight and his progression from resident to seasoned physician, and his struggles with substance abuse, institutional politics, and colleagues, make for a fascinating look behind the curtain in two settings: an urban hospital and a plastic surgery clinic, varying widely in the procedures they perform and the clientele they serve. Dr. Spight is a complex character with motivations and challenges to which we all can relate, leading him through physical and inner evolution and, ultimately, a satisfying resolution. Dr. Spight’s cross-country experiences, as well as an eclectic cast of characters and unexpected narrative twists, make for an exciting, interesting read.

L. M. Asta has published fiction in Zone 5, Inkwell, Philadelphia Stories, Battered Suitcase, and Schuylkill. Her essays have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Hippocrates. She trained in Philadelphia and writes and practices in Northern California.

Mary Evangelisto Miller (left) is a freelance writer and editor based in Bucks County. She has been self-employed as a medical editor for 22 years. Mary holds a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications and English from Temple University and a master’s degree in English and Publishing from Rosemont College.

More Strange Than True by C.J Spataro

Review by Jennifer Rivera

C.J. Spataro’s More Strange Than True is a genre-blending novel of romance and fantasy set in modern-day Philadelphia. Spataro magically weaves together the story of a woman who makes a wish for true love in a moment of grief and transition.  Through this wish, she unknowingly invokes the help of the fairies from Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  From that moment, Shakespeare’s famous words rang true, “Ay me! For aught that ever I could read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.”

The novel opens on the day of Jewell’s father’s memorial at a Center City restaurant called Puck’s Place.  While celebrating her father’s life with her childhood best friend Melody, and her restaurant owner boyfriend Bobby Fellowes, Jewell receives a text from her boyfriend Simon, in which he breaks up with her. While pondering her terrible taste in men, Jewell declares that men are worse than dogs, especially her dog, Oberon. Bobby sends her home with his newest dish, a magical mushroom pasta that has just been featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

After a quick trip to the dog park, she meets a lovely man named Steve. After being kindly rejected by Steve, Jewell and Oberon return to their apartment.  She digs into the deliciously magical pasta, sharing bites with the dog as they settle into their nightly routine. Jewell tells Oberon that he would make the perfect man for her. She reasons they share the same likes and dislikes and live together. Later in the evening, after thoroughly enjoying her meal, Jewell unknowingly calls out the faerie queen Titania three times, wishing for a man who will love her just as her dog does before drifting off to sleep.

In the faerie realm, Queen Titania searches for the sounds of the bells and crosses the veil from the faerie realm to Jewell’s apartment with her sisters, Ondine and Lolanthe. Although her sisters are more sympathetic to humankind, Titania reviles them, especially that fool Shakespeare, to whom she regrets showing herself.  But since she has come all this way, she decides to answer this human’s wish and turn her dog into a man. In a highly comical passage, the three fairies realize that the dog has been neutered and restore him to his original state before turning him into a man.

Once the dog has been transformed into a man, Titania demands to know his name. Oberon, he tells her, and the faerie queen is shocked, as this is the name of her long-lost husband.  Sensing the veil between their worlds is thinning, her sisters urge the queen to return home, but she is hesitant, feeling that fate brought her to the human world to meet her love again.

Jewell wakes up to the shock of her life: a strange nude man in her bed and her dog nowhere to be found. Oberon explains to Jewell that three women came and turned him from dog to man to fulfill her wish for true love. He proves it by recounting their trip to the dog park and meeting Steve. Although they are both still in disbelief, Jewell helps Oberon learn how to live as a human. Oberon contends with the loss of a simpler life as a dog.  As time progresses, Jewell and Oberon fall in love. Oberon begins working for Bobby, and their life together progresses.

Unbeknownst to the lovers, Titania has been watching them from her palace since Oberon’s transformation.  She returns to the mortal realm and confronts Bobby, uncovering his real identity as Robin Fellowes/Puck. Weaving the most crucial plot points from Shakespeare’s work, Titania seeks out other fae living among humans and attempts to put a spell on Oberon, so he falls in love with her.  She believes her spell to have brought forth the prophecy of the Elf King’s return. Similarly to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the spells do not go as planned, and the humans become aware of fairies among them.

More Strange Than True masterfully intertwines Shakespeare’s magical world with the real world of a Philadelphia-based environment.  The novel explores similar themes of the intricacies of relationships, mental and physical transformation, and the havoc that magic can create no matter who you are.  Jewell and Oberon are forced to make heartbreaking choices, and it is in these choices that these characters discover who they truly are, and that love is rarely unconditional.

C.J. Spataro’s short fiction has been awarded a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for fiction and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her long short story, “The Twi-Lite” won the Iron Horse Literary Review Fiction Trifecta and was published as an e-single.She has been a finalist in many contests including the Larry Brown Short Story Award from Pithead Chapel, Sequestrum’s Reprint Award, The Switchgrass Review, Mason’s Road, The Philadelphia City Paper, and december magazine, where she was a finalist for the Curt Johnson Prose Awards for Fiction. In 2018 she was nominated for a “Best of the Net” award. Her work was featured three times in the InterAct Theatre Company’s “Writing Aloud” series (which was Philadelphia’s version of NPR’s “Selected Shorts”).As an editor, she has edited the fiction for three “Best of” Anthologies for Philadelphia Stories and edited the fiction and non-fiction for Forgotten Philadelphia and Extraordinary Gifts: Remarkable Women of the Delaware Valley.Her work has also been included in the anthologies, Healing Visions (Matter Press 2023), Taboos & Transgressions: Stories of Wrongdoings (Madville Publishing 2021), Extraordinary Gifts (PS Books 2014), Another Breath (PS Books/RC Press 2014), 50 Over 50 (PS Books 2016), and Forgotten Philadelphia, Art and Writing Inspired by Philadelphia Heritage Sites (PS Books 2012). Her stories have been published in a number of literary magazines including, Exacting Clam, Sequestrum, Phantom Drift, Italian Americana, december magazine, Permafrost, The Baltimore Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and others. She’s had poetry published in Ovunque Siamo. She has a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Music from Central Michigan University, a Master of Music from Michigan State University, and an MFA in creative writing from Rosemont College. She has taught English composition, journalism, publishing, and creative writing courses at Rutgers, Rowan, Temple, and West Chester Universities, and at Rosemont College and the Community College of Philadelphia. C.J., or Carla as she is known by most, grew up in Michigan, which will always hold a special place in her heart. She has lived in Philadelphia for over 30 years, most of which with her partner, the artist and one-time standup comedian, Vincent Natale Martinez.

Jennifer Rivera (left) is a Latina writer and certified dog trainer. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Monmouth University in May 2024. Her prose and poetry have been featured in The Monmouth Review.