Our relationships are what define us. We would like to think that we are individuals who can control our own destinies and personalities, but it’s a big world, and when individuals clash, someone will always come out of the conflict different. Some of us are defined by the family that we grew up with. Some of us find ourselves through the perspective of someone important to us. Some of us go through a lot of pain and suffering in our relationships and end up changed, whether we wanted to be or not. Staying Gold is a collection of short stories that examine those difficult moments in our lives when our relationships with others become so important to our narrative that they change something in our identity-for better or for worse.