Fiction: Gram’s Search and Rescue
Below is an opening excerpt from this story. You can read the full version for free in Valparaiso Fiction Review’s Winter 2021 Issue, along with some other great fiction, too!
Gram needed to find her Imari ware platter or suffer Dotty’s intermittent digs at the Ladies’ League luncheon. Gram recently committed a cardinal mis-step at one of the League’s teas, a faux pas that demanded every remedial effort she could make.
After decades of china serving-ware oppression endured during endless Ladies’ League events, not to mention entertaining throughout Sal’s career and running the family holiday gauntlet during the years when the Harris clan still held family holidays, Gram finally admitted to herself that, just for once, she’d like to use paper plates and disposable platters. And then, although she could have easily kept this revelation to herself, she revealed this tiny truth of the soul to her girlfriends at the League’s Tuesday tea.
P.J. Powell co-hosts the podcast “Write Away with Nat and P.J.” Her short fiction has been published in Across the Margin, Manawaker Studio’s Flash Fiction Podcast, Perceptions Magazine, Voices de la Luna, and Youth Imagination Magazine. A strategic communications consultant and writer, P.J. is also a staunch defender of the productivity-boosting benefits of short naps, long walks, and dance breaks. Follow her on Twitter @2PSays, and visit her blog at Creatorology.com.
