Masterplans
by Nick Almeida
The title story of this collection features numerous elements of what I came to think of as the Almeidan universe: a woman with a prosthetic hook for a hand, a waterbed rent by sexual hijinks, a deadly cottonmouth, a plane crash. But at its heart—and this is really key to the whole shebang—the author is writing about grief and trauma, how we survive what we live through.