I Have the Answer

Made in Michigan Writers Series

By: Kelly Fordon

Narrated by: Simone Brooks, Kelly Fordon, Tom Fria, Stacey Glemboski, Griffin Puatu, Denice Stradling

Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

If you thought the suburbs were boring, think again. Kelly Fordon’s I Have the Answer artfully mixes the fabulist with the workaday, illuminating relationships and characters with crisp, elegant prose, and dark wit. The stories in Fordon’s latest collection are disquieting, humorous, and thought-provoking. They might catch you off guard, but are always infused with deep humanity and tenderness.

In these 13 short stories, Fordon presents people dealing with the grayness of reality and longing for transcendence. Characters within these stories are often as surprised by their own behavior as that of their neighbor’s. 

In "Jungle Life," the narrator attempts to clarify and document the stories of his father, a war veteran, before he descends into dementia. 

In "Where’s the Baby?", a woman reflects on her difficult childhood as she grudgingly cares for her more successful, yet exasperating sister. 

In "In the Dog House," a woman visits an estate sale and sifts through the layers of lifetimes past while grappling with her long-standing jealousy of a mysterious neighbor. 

In "The Shorebirds and the Shaman," a woman who has just lost her husband winds up at a kooky weekend retreat role-playing her way out of debilitating grief.

©2020 Wayne State University Press (P)2023 Kelly Fordon

A female Thomas Woolf

Kelly Fordon’s imaginative, beautifully written short stories bring Thomas Woolf to mind. They take us into the minds and hearts of everyday people facing real-life troubles: the vagaries of childhood, the lessons of adolescence, the challenges of marriage and suburbia. Her insightful stories ask, what does it mean to be a human, a parent, a wife, a friend? Moving, sometimes unsettling, often amusing, these stories are worth a listen.

Haunting collection that won't let you go

In Fordon’s gripping collection of stories about characters on the edge, we witness what happens when life deals a blow—divorce, addiction, empty nests, dementia, death—and they are forced to face the biggest unknown: themselves. In each pitch-perfect story, Fordon takes us to the precipice where trauma and triumph are equal possibilities. The people in these stories are so hauntingly real that long after I put down this book, I found myself wondering what became of them.

A Treasure

What a treasure I found in this little book of stories from Michigan! Wonderful writing – vivid and touching, by turns both dark and humorous.

How it Passed, one of the longer stories, was my favorite. Pithy and powerful, it pulled me in and submerged me once again in the sometimes-stultifying life of suburban SAHMs. It’s been a while since I was a young mother at a playground, but Fordon's patient unfolding of that existence, year by year, brought it all back. Fordon's voice and that of the story’s narrator (Simone Brooks) both ring true. I continue to think about the characters days later.