Please Come Back to Me

November 15, 2010
For her second story collection, Treadway draws from unsettling family dramas: parents whose mentally ill son may be guilty of a neighborhood crime; a wife who questions her relationship after her husband commits manslaughter; sisters whose memories of childhood diverge radically when one refuses to believe the other's allegations of incest; a young couple whose marriage is shadowed by cancer. Treadway examines and exposes emotions that few would readily admit to, such as a mother's impulse to suffocate her wailing son, or a woman's delight in exaggerating a childhood illness in order to gain admiration for her courage. Often set in winter, these eight tales reveal moments of empathy and revulsion alike, illuminating how love, complicated by both guilt and denial, can fray without unraveling entirely; Treadway doesn't gloss over her characters' shortcomings, nor the failure they feel for not accomplishing what they had hoped. Although the final story concludes with a disappointingly familiar realization—that we may search far and wide for signs of comfort only to find it in our midst—Treadway's writing is otherwise charged with perception.