Imagine there was a cure for all of life's problems in the form of a gigantic hole in the backyard of your newly purchased home.
Terrifying? Sure.
Tempting? Absolutely.
In one of Spokane author Leyna Krow's many alternate universes, a couple discovers the inconvenient sinkhole in their backyard has the power to fix anything that's thrown inside. A broken flashlight reappears from the void seconds later on their coffee table, good as new. A sick turtle is even cured of its illness to the delight of their son.
Krow's short story "Sinkhole" was originally written for the 2016 edition of Lilac City Fairy Tales, an anthology of mythical stories and poetry spearheaded by fellow writers Sharma Shields and Ellen Welcker. It was later reprinted in the Seattle literary journal Moss, gaining traction in both the literature community and Hollywood, when in 2020 producer Issa Rae and filmmaker Jordan Peele bought the rights to adapt it into a feature film.
Though there's no start date set for filming, "Sinkhole" and 15 other short stories now appear in Krow's newest collection, Sinkhole and Other Inexplicable Voids, releasing on Jan. 28.
"I would use the sinkhole all the time," Krow says when asked what she would throw in. "I have this iPod that I use very regularly from 2008, and I feel like it's almost on its last legs at this point. So I would definitely throw that into the sinkhole."
In Sinkhole and Other Inexplicable Voids, Krow weaves an ornate tapestry of tales beginning with "The Twin," in which a family of four's life is upended when the youngest boy, Jace, suddenly gains a twin in his crib overnight. Half of the stories in Sinkhole follow this family, consisting of matriarch Jenna, father Troy, daughter Ruby, and the twin boys Jace and Nicholas.
"If we can just accept that the strangeness is part of the world, then we can move on to what's more interesting a lot more quickly."
"When I first submitted a version of the manuscript to my editor, it had "The Twin" in it but none of the other stories involving that family," Krow says. "She said it felt disjointed, like there wasn't a unifying thread. So the inclusion of the recurring characters was a very, very late and artificial addition to the manuscript, but it ended up being the structure to the whole book."
"The Twin" sets the tone for the rest of the collection, a potpourri of stories mostly set in and around Spokane. It's familiar, but just unsettling enough to ignite a funny feeling in the reader's stomach.
Each of the 16 stories in Sinkhole is vastly different from the next, jumping across broad stretches of time to showcase the collection's underlying themes of climate change and familial bonds. There are windstorms, fires, butterfly migration incidents and newfound plagues that impact the shifting world in which Krow's characters reside.
Like "Sinkhole," each has a twist. In "A Plan To Save Us All," a plague is about to rip through a small community. In order to stop the diseases from ever occurring in the first place, a horde of time travelers go back in time to specialize in various fields.
"I think 'magical realism' is the genre that most people are familiar with when we're talking about those things," Krow says. "But I feel like my work is just more strange and otherworldly, so I like the term 'fabulism' better."
"Moser," meanwhile, features a baby trapped inside the body of a college-age male who accidentally becomes drunk while under the brief supervision of his mother's college roommate.
None of these characters, however, ever question the strange facets of the world around them, going blissfully about their lives while time travelers infiltrate and the existence of man babies is perhaps commonplace.
"If we can just accept that the strangeness is part of the world, then we can move on to what's more interesting a lot more quickly," Krow says. "We've got a limited amount of space together in short stories."
Before the release of her 2022 full-length novel, Fire Season, Krow penned her first short story collection, I'm Fine, But You Appear To Be Sinking, in 2017. She says she's been drawn to the short story format for a long time.
"I've always liked the succinctness," she says. "Most people don't enjoy them as much as novels, but I like the compressed nature of them. When I was in graduate school, I really felt like I got a handle on the different ways to write them, the different shapes that they can take and feel like a whole story unto themselves."
Krow's own father often points out that some of her stories don't appear to have an end, yet it's another facet she enjoys about her writing.
The final story in Sinkhole, "Appendix: Selected Letters from Grandma Jenna," neatly ties up the collection with a blood-red ribbon that reminds readers of the ominous "gift" that awaits us all: a climate disaster.
"I knew I wanted there to be a climate-driven disaster that would happen somewhere that wasn't Spokane but then would ripple into Spokane, and they would observe from afar," Krow says. "There's quite a lot of climate-driven literature at this point and, selfishly, I didn't want to write about climate change in a way that everybody else would."
Amid all the otherworldly phenomena around them, climate change creeps up on the characters in Krow's stories in different ways.
The twin Nicholas leaves Washington to become a firefighter in California due to earlier and earlier fire seasons. His brother Jace also sets out on a journey across the world seeking an opportunity to make a difference. Another character, glaciologist Andi, begs for access to a glacier near Mount Rainier before a catastrophic lahar can take place and wipe out cities at the base of the mountain.
While the fabulous scenarios Krow creates in Sinkhole and Other Inexplicable Voids are truly far-fetched, there are still layers of truth buried deep within. Climate change will eventually impact us all — if it hasn't already — no matter how far away we are from the epicenter.
"The lahar is a real thing, and it will happen if Rainier erupts," she says. "Climate change is something that we're all battling with in our world." ♦
Leyna Krow: Sinkhole and Other Inexplicable Voids • Tue, Jan. 28 at 7 pm • Free • Auntie's Bookstore • 402 W. Main Ave. • auntiesbooks.com
Northwest Passages: Leyna Krow • Tue, Feb. 4 at 7 pm • $10-$35 • Spokesman-Review • 999 W. Riverside Ave. • spokesman.com/northwest-passages
