Author

Jennifer Mason-Black

After stints working in a veterinary office, collecting research data in commercial apple orchards, and keeping people quiet in a library, Jennifer Mason-Black now hides away in the wilds of Massachusetts, where she homeschools her children and attends the occasional birth as a doula. The rest of the time she writes novels, short stories, and long and complicated grocery lists.

There's Always a Nuclear Bomb at the End

There is always a nuclear bomb at the end. Sometimes it belongs to terrorists, their lives devoted to this one thing, this one chance to blow up a city peopled entirely with women, children, frightened middle-aged cab drivers, young executives. They will detonate it whether…

Slumber

She wakes hungry. He knows this, now. He greets her sleepy smile with bread and honey, with blueberry pancakes and salmon jerky, with the last of the jelly made from the wild grapes. He covers the table with food--once, twice, three times--until she groans and pushes it away.…

This Place From Which All Roads Go

They come to study us. Not to help. They watch my father struggle his way through his chores and make notes in their notebooks, too busy charting our future to join our present. In any case, I've no reason to believe their help would be of use. Their essence smells…

Snowfall

And on the last day came the snow. Not the pristine blanket of yuletides past, but the gray of ashes, of the spoiled and the lost. It blew against the windows and collected on the bare soil outside, and by noon it had risen to my waist. By one we'd placed the last of the wood on…