The Road Trip

Now in its fifth year, Summer Stories is our annual short fiction series. This year’s theme: The Road Trip. We’ll feature stories from some of the region’s best writers about road trips that are memorable, strange and sometimes a bit of both. Buckle up!

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Latest Stories

‘Road’s End’

By Alexis Smith

Two days before the bike tour, a group text from Ruth: She was so sorry, but she was spread too thin – had really hoped she could rally – but needed some self-care this weekend. They understood, didn’t they? Then a flurry of response from the other …
No More Stops

By Kris Dinnison

‘Can you please turn off that noise?”

Emily reached out, turning the radio’s knob with a snap. “Happy?”

Her mother chuckled. “Happier,” she said.

Emily shifted the gigantic Impala into reverse. She hadn’t driven her mom’s car for at least a year, and the three-on-the-tree gearshift made …
Britnay

By Chelsea Martin

I watched my mom do it my whole life. She’d call her sister, or her sister-in-law, or my grandma, or one of her old coworkers, or the woman who used to babysit me, whoever, and make up some story about her car being impounded, or a need …
Lakes

By Simeon Mills

Life was different for robots back in the 1980s. I was a baby, and Dad was a brand new father. Our relationship was strained from the start. Dad seemed paranoid having a state-of-the-art infant son crawling around the house; I was just further proof he was becoming …
Queen of the Road

By Kim Barnes

It was Sheila, 10 years younger than I was, 60 pounds lighter, and nimble as a goat, who first had the idea, and watching her get a good grip on the lowest rail, take a little leap, and begin climbing up the stacks of that car-hauler, I …
The Old Road

By Shann Ray

THE SIMPLE TRUTH: John Sender believed in love.

Thirty-three. Still single. Driven, overly driven. So much head work, and such solitude, but now into his self-doubt, love. Real love. A love he could hardly believe after such drought, but yes, he believed. He’d even gone home to …
Eleanor’s the World’s Largest Ball of Twine

By Leyna Krow

From The Grimsville Gazette – Paid Advertisement
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, citizens of Grimsville young and old, I write to you today with good news. The wait is over. Your beloved World’s Largest Ball of Twine is once again open for business!
Let the Dogs Drive

By Bruce Holbert

The cops want my dogs. Your whole adult life you wonder where the line is. You surrender pieces of yourself until you resemble that knight in Monty Python who loses all his limbs but still wants to fight. I swallowed my tongue each instance a job or …
Bargaining

By Stephanie Oakes

Dad never bought what could be bartered for.

“I bet I can pull that tumor from your brain,” he said to the elderly man gassing up the blue truck, a lacework of rust cupping each wheel well. “In exchange for that truck.”
Not Too Bad a Guy

By Shawn Vestal

In Week 1 of The Spokesman-Review’s Summer Stories series, award-winning author and newspaper columnist tells the the story of one man’s attempt to get out from under.