Monday Morning Required Reading. I just finished Megan Mayhew Bergman's stunning debut collection of stories, Birds of a Lesser Paradise. Yes, I realize that sounds rather cliched and stereotypically book-review-esque, but sometimes cliches ring true. While the story that slayed me in this collection was "Every Vein a Tooth," I couldn't find it online to share with you all. I did, after much searching, find "Housewifely Arts," the first story in the book. The opening paragraph instantly sucked me into this story of a search for home. Read it, and if you are as enthralled as I was, go out and buy a copy of the book. I promise you won't regret it.

I am my own housewife, my own breadwinner. I make lunches and change lightbulbs. I kiss bruises and kill copperheads from the backyard creek with a steel hoe. I change sheets and the oil in my car. I can make a piecrust and exterminate humpback crickets in the crawl space with a homemade glue board, though not at the same time. I like to compliment myself on these things, because there's no one else around to do it. 

Turn left, Ike says, in a falsetto British accent. 

There is no left - only a Carolina road that appears infinitely flat, surrounded by pines and the occasional car dealership billboard. I lost my mother last spring and am driving nine hours south on I-95 with a seven-year-old so that I might hear her voice again. 

Exit approaching, he says from the backseat. Bear right. 

Who are you today? I ask. 

The lady that lives in the GPS, Ike says. Mary Poppins. 

[KEEP READING]