The Only Thing I Have

Featured in Geist magazine and The Globe and Mail

A new and daring voice, Rhonda Waterfall writes with clarity about the simple, utter truths of human relationships: the small yet essential things that could change our lives if only we let them. She introduces us to two contrasting worlds, one with the startling realism of everyday life and one where the world has been knocked askew.

In the story "When You Are Gone," awoman runs away from her domestic situation, holed up in a downtown hotel where she imagines a life away from her stagnant marriage. In "Shooting the Driver," a young boy dreams of sailing to Alaska just before his arrest. There is Palma in "Moths," who navigates her loneliness by becoming the mother to a swarm of moths. And in "Paul and the Girl," a man comforts a young woman who is haunted by visions of planescrashing and buildings falling.

In Rhonda Waterfall's unsettling, evocatively written stories, life unfolds in odd, unpredictable ways: a murderous plot revealed through Post-It notes; a film director who will do anything to recapture his lost youth; an elderly woman who finds the love of a child in a marrow squash. Throughout, her characters are noble in the face of heartache, and human amidst the surreal darkness and light.