Together We Can Bury It

Spanning nearly a decade of Kathy Fish’s writing, Together We Can Bury It draws heavily on the author’s Midwestern roots. Like the changing seasons, themes of childhood, siblinghood, and adult loss and betrayal are woven throughout these stories. In Florida, we share in Emmeline’s devastation when her mother makes her go to school unbathed after wetting the bed: But how will you ever learn if you don’t suffer the consequences? In stories like Shoebox, we witness daughters struggling against distant parents, their lives out of control; these girls don’t want to grow big and strong, they want to be left alone.

As we read about and remember milestone moments from our own lives, like first kisses, first heartbreak, and first sexual encounters, so too do we recognize that familiar smile a woman wears when she’s on the verge of tears, particularly in stories like Wake Up,
The Hollow,
Breathless, and Foreign Film, which reveal to us the lives of women in the midst of separation, divorce, widowhood, and desperation: I call my husband sometimes in the middle of the night. ‘Are we going to be okay?’ I ask, whispering. I don’t want to wake him up completely. It is difficult not to think of these women as the little girl, all grown up now, from Wild Yellow Dog, Giant Red Fox, whose grandmother gives her a Royal typewriter and asks: Please make your next story a happy one. This is a collection that captures the feeling of embarking on a long trip, something important and urgent, as if someone far away has died and here we are, speeding to the wake.