Long Distances

Three thousand miles. That’s how far Nate has to drive to get to Los Angeles, to satisfy the dreams of his wife Della and find a new life for the two of them and their daughters. But cruising through Indiana in the early hours of morning with the rest of the car asleep, Nate can’t help but wonder how everything happened – how their love had grown strange and distant, how he’d decided to abandon his mother with no one to look after her, how he’d lost so much of the certainty he once had. Jewell Parker Rhodes develops an expansive narrative within the length of a short story of a man getting closer to a new home, but farther from his true self.