Bed is where we sleep and dream, where we make love and give ourselves nightmares. The thirteen stories in Wendy Rawlings's Time for Bed traverse the complicated terrain of bedtime activity, from adulterous couplings to nightmares that come to life, in terms that can feel lurid, unsettling, or disturbingly funny. A college student struggles with her mother leaving her father for a "cafeteria lady" at her high school. A woman loses her only daughter in a mass school shooting and goes on a road trip to buy a custom coffin, then decides to take a side trip to NRA headquarters. A daughter decides she should be born again-literally. Social, cultural, and familial disruptions haunt these characters in their waking lives as they look to grab something or someone for stability.
A collection of comic stories that confront difficult and tragic events, Time for Bed crafts dreamscapes and bizarre encounters into bedtime stories for adults.
"Wendy Rawlings' Time for Bed is snappy, hilarious, bracing reading. She's a master storyteller who's thought long and hard about the possibilities of the form. This is a long-overdue collection from one of my favorite writers."
Jess Row
"Time for Bed took me to places I was scared to go and made me glad to be there. Whether Rawlings's stories involve the everyday or the outlandish, they come alive through the magic of deep and urgent emotion: stakes. Women are front and center here: mothers with regrets, daughters with desires, loyal friends, sworn frenemies. Time for Bed's final story is one of the best about 9/11 I've read."
