Family happiness—an ideal that can be elusive. This 174-page story collection explores the struggle to achieve and maintain happiness within family. Some stories are dark, some funny, and some both, but most serve a healthy helping of hope and redemption.
“Family Happiness proves once again that Jon Sindell can craft entire universes out of thin air. This time, Sindell aims his lens at the American family, as he explores the knotty relationships within. With one ear to the streets and the other listening for a heartbeat in the spaces between parent and child, husband and wife, this collection of American domestics is as heartbreaking as it is witty. The next time someone suggests the short story is a dying form, give them Family Happiness to read. A revival awaits.”
~ Christopher Bundy, Baby, You’re a Rich Man
Family Happiness
"These wonderful stories by Jon Sindell show us that family happiness isn't so much illusive, as mismanaged. These stories are funny and sad and brave and hopeful. They’re portraits of everything that goes on in families, whole lives managed realistically and deftly. The characters are more than their personal histories, more than ourselves reflected, but contain whole eras, cultural moods and national quirks in their speech, their manners, their ways—our times, our constituted selves that add special poignancy in the passing parade of botched and beautiful lives. You will be moved."
~ Stephen D. Gutierrez, winner of the American Book Award and author of The Mexican Man in His Backyard, Stories & Essays
“What really knits these narratives is the voice, with its appealing qualities of self-deflating humor, authenticity, vulnerability, imagination, and intelligence. Readers will appreciate Sindell’s poet’s ear and ambitious style, but for his characters, they’ll feel a sympathy and delight that will keep them turning the page.”
~ Rebecca Foust, author of Paradise Drive, winner of the 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry