Aliens & Other Stories
A collection of loosely-linked stories about people coping with exile: from their nations, their families, their objects of desire. Political refugees from Argentina’s “dirty war,” survivors of a Cuban shipwreck and of Franco’s Spain, a former Peruvian missionary and a stubborn expatriate, navigate life in Madrid, Buenos Aires, and suburban Washington, D.C. A minor character in one story appears as the narrator in another, as different generations reconcile the absurdities of contemporary American culture with a legacy of dislocation, loss and longing.
Available at www.washingtonwriters.org and bookshop.org
Awards
Winner of the 2013 WWPH Fiction Prize
Best Indie Books of 2013, Shelf Unbound
Reviews
Washington City Paper
Praise For Aliens & Other Stories
Kathleen Wheaton’s characters are exiles: from their nations, their native families, their objects of desire. These “ruined specimens,” as one character calls them, are almost always rescued — if not by circumstance, then by Wheaton’s compassionate, penetrating prose. These cleverly interlinked stories are a homeland of their own, and more than worth the journey.
-Michael Lowenthal
In Aliens and Other Stories, Kathleen Wheaton captures the disparate narratives of immigrants adrift in middle-class America — from the displaced and underemployed to the haunted legacy of Argentina’s desaparecidos. She imbues these stories with warmth and nuance and — perhaps most remarkably of all — with humor.
-Susan Coll
With a keen eye and a rich and precise prose, Kathleen Wheaton embarks on a journey into the hearts and minds of exiles and expatriates. From the alienated and somber atmosphere of Argentina’s “dirty war” to Madrid and Washington D.C., her characters are castaways, trying to find meaning in a reality that seems suspended in a moral vacuum. Aliens and Other Stories is a remarkable first book.
-Mario Diament, former editor of La Opinión
What a pleasure it is to read Kathleen Wheaton’s collection of short stories, all of which expose with knife-like clarity the all-too-human flesh of contemporary life. Wheaton connects her characters to the world beyond the front door and the community while at the same time, and often with a sweet touch of humor, invites us into the heart of the family. Wheaton reveals the worst and the best of people unsure but still trying.
-Anne Bernays