End of the Road

In the multi-layered, multi-nuanced narratives that readers have come expect in the Mendelson landscape, San Francisco reporter Damian Vrabel goes off looking for America. Returning with 36 tightly written short stories-each exactly 1,000 words-Vrabel chronicles departure and disappointment, betrayal and bereavement. Traveling the length and breadth of the continent, its heartland and its edges-San Diego and Alaska, Key West and Peggy's Cove, even Paris and Prague-Vrabel encounters terminal patients, shell-shocked soldiers, and ex-convicts; the troubled, lost, and bewildered. Witnessing every person's loss, Vrabel helps each to articulate a sad epiphany. Subtitled American Elegies, the book shares it tales of failure-while discovering hope in all of us. As Vrabel-and his readers-look to re-discover the American Dream, they find instead the "End of the Road."