Journeys from a Desert Road

When a sheer, brilliant light erupts in the desert night, Jack recognizes it as the awesome and destructive power of an atomic bomb. But in another world, far removed from Jack's mind, his family sits by his side after a traumatic car accident has rendered him comatose. Jack, relying on fantasies he and his sister fabricated as teenagers, struggles to lead the people he loves out of radiation-contaminated Phoenix as his family keeps vigil in his hospital room, marshaling their reserves of patience and determination.

Yet even as Jack and his family experience these different realities, events from one world drift into the other, reshaping and influencing one another as they move toward a climactic union. Whether fleeing nuclear disaster or pacing by a sickbed, these flawed and stressed individuals behave with fierce loyalty and an equally fierce love that forces an ascension of hope and survival.

Mary Clyde is the author of Survival Rates, a 1999 Flannery O'Connor Award winner. Her short fiction has appeared in journals and anthologies, including the Georgia Review, Quarterly West, Boulevard, and New Stories from the South. She earned an MA from the University of Utah and an MFA from Vermont College. She has taught undergraduate writing, literature, and graduate creative writing. She is the mother of five and a proud grandmother. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona, the granddaughter of people who settled in the Valley of the Sun in 1920.

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