Cassie Klein has always used stories to help her fly, but now her plot points aren’t lining up.
In her 50s, Cassie has already weathered more than most. She was orphaned at the age of two and has never fully understood why her DC-based parents were on a bridge in West Virginia that just so happened to collapse as they drove across it. Her search for answers prompted a failed career in journalism, and now she’s an aspiring novelist teaching at a local community college waiting for her literary dreams to finally come true. She stood by her once-doting husband when his meteorology career took a nosedive, and now she has learned that the man who became an internet meme has been cheating on her.
She’s had enough. She scoops up a teething puppy and embarks on a road trip that’s heavy on impulse and light on planning. She’s not sure where she’s going, but she knows she might as well start at the beginning. What really happened to her parents all those years ago?
In this comically surreal, warmhearted journey, she encounters people she never knew existed—chief among them, an enigmatic cryptozoologist, who helps her in the quest to discover her past. And along the way, she looks for answers regarding curious sightings of a creature known as the Mothman in the months before her parents died. As the line between real life and fiction blurs, Cassie finds herself grappling with the nature of stories, myths, and who gets to write the endings.
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A crumbling marriage, stalled writing ambitions, and a lifetime of questions suppressed by her family about the tragedy that shaped her childhood lead Cassie on an impromptu journey to solve the mystery that has always plagued her regarding her unusual past. With an unruly puppy as her travel companion, bad weather, broken eyeglasses, and spotty GPS coverage, Cassie has no choice but to let instinct guide her on this chaotic, quirky, and heartwarming quest. REAL LIFE AND OTHER FICTIONS is that rare jewel of a story: one that both entertains and enlightens, one that makes pandemonium profound. Susan Coll is a literary alchemist--a writer who combines comedy and calamity and turns it into storytelling gold.
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