The Sleeping Wall

“Jane M. Downs’ sentences refuse distance. They slip under the skin.
They float in the blood stream and shiver in cartilage and the marrow
of small bones. Reading them is a wondrous, trembly thing.”
—Mark Ari
Distraught over her marriage to James, Medina drives her two young
sons over a gravel road toward a house on a lake. She is also a young
girl in her parent’s car, riding over the same road. War reaches into
their lives, driving a traumatic past toward unimaginable loss. In Jane
M. Downs’ nontraditional narrative, the past is inextricably woven
into the present, filling each moment with a sense of the breadth of
human suffering, desire, and need.
“Startlingly fresh and vivid with observations of the natural world,
Jane Downs’ terse, lyrical prose conveys a tragic vision. It reminds me
of what I love about D. H. Lawrence, his sense of the vexed nature of
human connection, of the vast wonder of creation itself.
A brilliant achievement.”
—Kathleen Weaver
Winner of the
Fiction Fix Novella Award
Jane M. Downs has published her work in numerous journals
and anthologies, including Field, North American Review, Ninth
Letter, and Rhino. She has published three chapbooks, April
Elegy, Adirondack Dream, and The Weight of Pink Peonies, and her poetry
has won prizes. She is a partner in Red Berry Editions with book
artist Marie Dern. She lives in Kensington, California with her husband
and her amazing dog.
www.fictionfix.net
Cover photograph by Kevin Noonan
Printed in the U.S.A.