along with the teenager from Albany, the retired school teacher from Dayton, the ex-priest from Phoenix, the grandmother from Omaha, and the pregnant woman from Seattle. No rhyme, no reason, no sustained and rational narrative. Just a “get out of line and surrender your passport.” In a makeshift screening room—a heavy black drape suspended like a shower curtain in one corner of the gate area—they are paraded one by one and asked to describe the Hudson River, Wright Brothers, Colorado River irrigation policies, insurance claims, and Starbucks. His wife gets a multiple choice drill. Their eventual status has nothing to do with watch lists, terrorism, or bombings and everything to do with geography, history, politics, economics, and the proper amount of foam on a decaf latte. Our heroine’s husband is frantic. He refuses to board the plane until his wife emerges victorious from behind the black curtain. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

—From a manuscript-in-progress, Fragments from the New World

Bio: Linda Nemec Foster