Universally Adored and Other One Dollar Stories

'Exquisite short stories that give me hope.' John McNally, author of The Book of Ralph: A NovelIn Universally Adored and Other One Dollar Stories, Elizabeth Bruce gives readers 33 ways of looking at a dollar. Her empathetic, humorous, and disarming embrace of plain-spoken people searching for a way out, charms and provokes. These are bittersweet stories of resilience and defiance.In 'Universally Adored,' a color-obsessed artist draws a facsimile of a dollar-a masterpiece universally adored-to win her girlfriend back. While checking for spare change in the laundry, in 'Bald Tires' a Tennessee housewife with a malcontent husband finds an unused condom in his Sunday trousers. In 'The Forgiveness Man,' a runaway teen with a newborn follows a vagabond healer absolving the bedraggled godless through hugs of forgiveness. And in 'Magic Fingers, a ladies' room attendant tracked down by her abusive ex finds refuge in a cheap motel with a 1970s era bed massager. Riffing on the intimate object of a dollar, Bruce's humane short fictions-from a great mashed potato war to the grass Jesus walked on-ring with the exquisite voices of characters in analog worlds.