A compelling and inventive collection about the ways we leave and the reasons we choose what to leave behind.
Framed within a tale about a journalist investigating choices of life and death, the eighteen stories in this collection explore restlessness, belonging, freedom, and mortality. A prisoner falls in love with his cellmate's fiancée and breaks out to confess his feelings. A woman journeys from Honduras to the United States in the hope of a better life. Convenience store owners attempt to free themselves from financial burden by withholding evidence to a murder. The characters in Exit Strategies are all in need of a way out, a way forward, a way through.
In Exit Strategies, it is less about the destination and more about the initial decision to leave. In this daring and inventive debut, Paul Cresey weaves narratives that are sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, but always utterly captivating.
Authors
- Pages
- 264
- Published in
- Calgary, CA
- Rights
- Paul Cresey
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Title Page 5
- Dedication 7
- #1 The Love Story of Vladimir Fiser and Marika Ferber 9
- #2 Reward 15
- #3 The Crooked Salvor 27
- #4 Not the Summit but the Plummet 47
- #5 Hard Time 55
- #6 Houses 69
- #7 The Parable of the Wild Man and the Priest 73
- #8 The Interstellar Voyage of Granger Taylor 79
- #9 Caravan 87
- #10 Bambi, the Revelator 95
- #11 Muscles Make a Shit Personality 103
- #12 Hair, A Fable 123
- #13 Old Friends 129
- #14 Opposite Ends 149
- #15 Tilikum, The Killer Whale 163
- #16 Release, the Sequel to "Hard Time" 173
- #17 A Deserted Island 189
- #18 Bundy Vibes 195
- #19 Rachel 211
- #20 Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out 225
- #21 The Darién Gap, A Beginning 229
- Afterword: The Collection 251
- Sources 261
- Acknowledgements 263
- About the Author 266
