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FUNCTIONAL FAMILIES

$17.95

Families. You can’t pick them, but you can keep them. Or not.  

As your family is bright, so is it dark. Sure, the love and laughter of family lingers in your heart, yet it’s the secrets, pranks, and punishments that haunt your soul. The mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons in Functional Families all seek only love to cure their familial ills, but they often go about it in strange ways. To come to terms with his father’s past and encroaching dementia, Reynold Vasquez takes his father out for one last fancy dinner in “Bird Dog,” while in “Bat Out of Hell,” Margaret abandons her mother at a Tijuana gas station hoping to move on with her life. In “My First War,” young cadet Gilbert Fernandez goes AWOL from a pretend battlefield to be with his pregnant girlfriend on the verge of an abortion, and in “Wheel of Fortune,” Hillary Clinton visits a homegirl fortune teller in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the end, these disparate souls resolve their desperate actions to return to their nuclei, the only places they can call home.  

Families. You can’t pick them, but you can keep them. Or not.  

As your family is bright, so is it dark. Sure, the love and laughter of family lingers in your heart, yet it’s the secrets, pranks, and punishments that haunt your soul. The mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons in Functional Families all seek only love to cure their familial ills, but they often go about it in strange ways. To come to terms with his father’s past and encroaching dementia, Reynold Vasquez takes his father out for one last fancy dinner in “Bird Dog,” while in “Bat Out of Hell,” Margaret abandons her mother at a Tijuana gas station hoping to move on with her life. In “My First War,” young cadet Gilbert Fernandez goes AWOL from a pretend battlefield to be with his pregnant girlfriend on the verge of an abortion, and in “Wheel of Fortune,” Hillary Clinton visits a homegirl fortune teller in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the end, these disparate souls resolve their desperate actions to return to their nuclei, the only places they can call home.  

Praise for FUNCTIONAL FAMILIES

The folks who populate Taylor Garcia's astonishing story collection are loyal sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, who both love their kin and, at the same time, are desperate to escape them. Garcia captures this doomed loyalty with an unflinching eye. His stories are tough and tender-hearted, brief and astonishing dramas that show us what we know to be true: that our families are designed to drive us crazy, but also to bring us deeper into ourselves. I loved these stories."

Steve Almond, Author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football.

The stories in Functional Families are sharp, surprising glimpses of those moments of life when the cracks start to show, when a border is crossed, when it's clear things will never be the same. Taylor Garcia writes with great heart and humor and I gobbled up his wonderful collection.

Jess Walter, Author of seven novels, one book of short stories and one nonfiction book. His work has been translate

 

About TAYLOR GARCIA

Taylor García is the author of numerous short stories, essays, and the short story collection Functional Families. He writes for the Good Men Project focusing on parenting and fatherhood issues. He is a multi-generational hispano born and raised in Santa Fé, New Mexico and now resides in Southern California with his family.

 

  • Genre: Fiction (Short stories)

    ISBN: 978-1-950730-87-2

    Publication Date: November 2, 2021