Crosscurrents and Other Stories was published by Press 53 in 2015. Here’s a bit from “Mating,” the first story in the collection:

The first time Gail ran away from Cleary Mayfield, she drove south across the Florida panhandle to the Gulf and rented a room in a cheap motel three blocks from the beach. She rarely left the room, and when she did, she tucked her hair under a hat and wore sunglasses. She walked to the gas station where she bought junk food and beer. Nights, she lay awake and peeked out the drapes every time she heard a car in the lot, expecting Cleary’s old van to come to a rolling stop in front of her room and shine its bright lights through the plate-glass window.

Praise for Crosscurrents and Other Stories:

Gerry Wilson’s stories are about the essential tugs between desires: for safety or risk; for adventure or comfort; for sanctioned action or the indubitably un. Her characters are in mortal combat, most often with themselves. This is a very exciting and compelling collection of stories; I loved reading it.  —Antonya Nelson, author of Funny Once: Stories

What electric, wild passages, these stories by Gerry Wilson! I always wondered what lurked behind the pink fence at the Wild Animal Park. How I longed for seating in that tattered, empty Italian restaurant with its ancient candles and bombastic opera! And the women, the men here, their flaws, their loves, their excruciating valences, their delicate choices! Eleven circuits crackling with life await you. 

—Steve Yates, author of the Juniper Prize-winning Some Kinds of Love: Stories

Gerry Wilson’s vivid debut collection tackles a vast array of human experiences: death, birth, love, abuse, parenting, infidelity, youth, and aging. Rich with metaphor and dark symbolism, Crosscurrents shows women fighting the undertow of their tragedies with wisdom and sincerity.  

—Erika Krouse, author of Contenders                                    

What a dazzling debut collection. Gerry Wilson’s spare, lucid prose and inventive story design illuminate the secret truth that, even within the loops and tangles of relationships and family, all of us are strays, wild, fragile, and hungry. These stories explore losses and the discoveries loss impels, yet Crosscurrents is, above all, about connection—never easy, often found where least expected, but giving life surprising grace.  —Lynne Barrett, author of Magpies                

Crosscurrents and Other Stories is available at Press 53 and Amazon.