WHAT YOU GAVE

Abstract

A young woman, distraught by her abusive father’s unexpected suicide, goes back to her hometown and rediscovers the reasons she loved it and the reasons she left. In particular, she goes through the life that her father left behind -- his home, his work, and his regrets – as a way to better understand him and also herself. Along the way, she comes to terms with the ways that she and her father are unexpectedly similar, and the ramifications of those similarities on both old and new relationships: notably, her developing relationships with her long-distant aunt, from whom she learns key details about her family, and with a local boy with whom she was once friends, and who wants something more. The work also deals with her relationship to fishing and the South as an abstract concept, as she tries to separate the ways that her father was both key to and distinct from her understanding of the world she lives in and the way she lives.