F I C T I O N Cupboards and closets gaped open, their contents pulled haphazardly into the room. Upended storage bins, toppled toy boxes, furniture dragged into the center of the room. An aging sofa lay upside down, its cheesecloth all but ripped from its tacking. Joe sat sobbing beside the gutted entertainment center. Melissa crossed the room slowly. She stood above Joe, looking down, then sank to the floor beside him. She cradled his head against her breast and rocked. “Stop it now, Joe,” she said. “You really have to stop now.” “But where is he?” Joe Christopher wailed. “Where did he go? I can’t find him anywhere?”
Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner’s first novel, Dancing Naked, was awarded the Utah Center for the Book’s Utah Book Award and the Utah Arts Council’s Publication Prize. His short stories have appeared in literary periodicals, magazines, ezines and anthologies, and have been selected for various awards, including Carolina Quarterly’s Charles B. Wood Award for Distinguished Writing, Shenandoah’s Jeanne Charpiot Goodheart Award for Fiction, Sunstone’s Brookie and D.K. Brown Memorial Fiction Award, and Weber's Dr. O. Marvin Lewis Award for Best Fiction. Van Wagoner’s two current projects, both novels, are highly influenced by the traditions and landscapes unique to their settings: Cautionary Tales in Ogden, Utah, and East of the Sound Flows a River in the rural foothills of Washington’s North Cascades, on the banks of the Skagit River. He and his family live in Washington state.
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