It's hard being the kid who moves every few years. Combine that with a dysfunctional home, natural disaster, and parentification. It's up to Sarah to invent out of chaos. She hurls herself into overdue library books, googly-eyed alter egos, rock bands in dusty basements, mountain trails, and most confusingly, love.
Echolocation is a collection of stories inspired by true events, following a young girl from Chicagoland who dreams of being a dolphin trainer but becomes a writer who sorts through chicken scratch and cobbled-together collages to form a narrative that is uniquely and emotionally hers.
Stories touch on themes like parent-child role reversal, sibling relationships, sexual exploration, creative growth, spiritual re-evaluation, and other forms of identity questioning. It will appeal to anyone carving a space for themselves during hard times but especially to those who lived a 90s childhood marked by the Mario games and who joined the workforce post 2008's economic disaster. The last story ends with the quarantine lockdown of COVID-19. Sarah moves again, this time away from everything she knows – to embark on the dirty journey of age 30.
Stories that first appeared in literary publications include: "Lenny" (Jersey Devil Press), "Whoopie Pie" (Bird's Thumb), "Shades of Nude" (Bayou Magazine), and "Crap Apples" (Better Than Starbucks).
I hope Echolocation is a soft, loving place for those looking to learn themselves deeply in a world constantly demanding their attention and production. Enjoy a few laughs, maybe a cry, and a hearty congratulations for making it this far.
