Things We Do When No One Is Watching: Stories — Philip Gerard

Fiction. An 18-year-old driving up to Canada to escape the Vietnam draft, a lonely housewife trying to attract the ghost of a ten-year-old housemaid, a widowed professor of archeology trying to keep his head after a home invasion gone wrong, a 36-year-old accountant tasked with making preparations for the funeral of one of his best friends, siblings coming together to get their polio-stricken younger brother the perfect Christmas gift. The struggles of these characters explore loss, loneliness, estrangement, and surprising ways of coping and understanding themselves in new ways.