The Truth about Celia

While playing alone in her backyard one afternoon, seven-year-old Celia suddenly disappears while her father Christopher is inside giving a tour of their historic house and her mother Janet is at an orchestra rehearsal.



Utterly shattered, Christopher, a writer of fantasy and science fiction, withdraws from everyone around him, especially his wife, losing himself in his writing by conjuring up worlds where Celia still exists—as a child, as a teenager, as a young single mother—and revealing in his stories not only his own point of view but also those of Janet, the policeman in charge of the case, and the townspeople affected by the tragedy, ultimately culminating in a portrait of a small town changed forever. The Truth About Celia is a profound meditation on grief and loss and how we carry on in its aftermath.

Kevin Brockmeier is the author of the story collection Things That Fall from the Sky and the children's novel City of Names. He has published stories in many magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney's, and The Best American Short Stories, and his story The Green Children” from The Truth About Celia was selected for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. He has received the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award, an Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, a James Michener—Paul Engle Fellowship, two O. Henry Awards (one of which was a first prize), and, most recently, an NEA grant. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

About Kevin Brockmeier