Mark Dunn - American Decameron

1913 CLAIRVOYANT IN NEW YORK

The three grown offspring of a woman being milked of the family fortune by enterprising charlatan-psychics set a trap to drive the scammers out of town.

1914 DEVOTIONAL IN ILLINOIS

An eighteen-year-old woman’s diary reveals the details of a life-changing summer upon the grounds of the New Piasa Chautauqua, a spiritual and educational retreat.

1915 HAVING A SINKING FEELING IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC

An accidental reunion provides an opportunity for two couples, survivors of the torpedoing of RMS Lusitania , to speak of that which they hadn’t been able to talk about before.

1916 INCARCERATED IN OKLAHOMA

A convict reveals to his cellmate the reason for his imprisonment: the murder of his uncle, stopped in the course of trying to drown the convict’s mentally challenged brother as directed by the convict’s own father.

1917 PRINCIPLED IN MASSACHUSETTS

A short story writer on the staff of a popular magazine must decide whether to serve his country’s propaganda machine or be true to his own views about a war he doesn’t support.

1918 TREPID IN FRANCE

A World War I doughboy sees fear embodied in a terrified young private, for whom the only thing worse than death is the dread that can often precede it.

1919 VESTAL IN NORTH DAKOTA

A disturbed war veteran finds a tragically counterproductive way to protect womanhood from the depravities of man.

1920 FILIAL IN TENNESSEE

The deciding vote to grant universal suffrage to American women is cast by a young man who has always minded his mother.

1921 COMPOSED (?) IN OREGON

A nationally renown classical composer, commissioned to write a concerto for ukelele and orchestra, finds himself tormented both by the demons of his schizophrenic nature, and by the one from whom he inherited those very demons.

1922 CINEASTIC IN ARKANSAS

A minister learns that his young son has been sneaking off to the wicked picture show. The discovery has an unexpected effect on the relationship between the two.

1923 CONSPIRATORIAL IN NORTH CAROLINA

A jury in Greensboro must decide the fate of a woman who fired a shot at her husband’s lover. The case isn’t all that it seems, but then again, neither is the jury.

1924 DOUBLE FAULTED IN ILLINOIS AND D.C.

Two teenage boys die within weeks of one another, one the famous son of a sitting U.S. president, the other a soon-to-be famous victim of cold-blooded murder — each death inadvertently brought on by a love of the game of tennis.

1925 ACROPHILIC AND AGORAPHOBIC IN PENNSYLVANIA

1901’s high-flying little girl is all grown up now — a daredevil, flag pole-sitting flapper who falls for (and with) the brother of two young men who cannot leave their house until called to the ultimate test: to rescue their fallen brother and his new love.

1926 BETWEEN THE HAMMER AND THE ANVIL IN KENTUCKY

An old woman looks back at the tragic reason behind her parents’ divorce.

1927 ASSISIAN IN MASSACHUSETTS

A drunkenly candid supporter of the Fall River Animal Rescue League tells the “true” story of Lizzie Borden and the murderous deed that historical consensus has ascribed to her.

1928 MISDEEMED IN INDIANA

A newlywed wife can’t abide her husband’s disgustingly peculiar fetish; in an effort to understand it, she solicits the opinion of an ill-equipped door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.

1929 TAKING A DIM VIEW IN MICHIGAN

A sexually reticent woman who is losing her eyesight decides to cop a look at a well-formed man in his most natural state before it’s too late.

1930 WITHOUT APRON STRINGS IN DELAWARE

A middle-aged man finally tracks down the mother who gave him up for adoption when he was a baby, with unexpected results.

1931 AWED AND WONDERING IN CONNECTICUT

When propositioned by her boss with the admonition that a refusal will result in the loss of her job, a woman gets a response from her unemployed husband that she never expected.

1932 FASCISTIC IN D.C.

A participant in the “Bonus Army” march on Washington gives his account of the last hours of the army’s occupancy of the city, with special attention paid to the man whose job it was to clear D.C. of all veteran “vagrants.”

1933 LETTING GO IN MISSOURI

While waiting for the midnight legalization of “near” beer, two friends who are also employer and employee at a local ice company discuss the recent crash of the dirigible USS Akron and its relevance to a difficult decision the ice company’s owner has made.

1934 ADULTEROUS IN ILLINOIS

The husband of one couple and the wife of another decide to confess their affair to their respective spouses at the Chicago World’s Fair with disastrous, albeit not unpredictable, results.

1935 PERSEVERINGLY TERPSICHOREAN IN WASHINGTON STATE

Two older women from different sides of the track form a friendship while watching a dance marathon and cheering on their favorite couples — a friendship that is destined to last no longer than the viability of the couples who compete before them.

1936 SHABBY-GENTEEL IN CALIFORNIA

A migrant worker is invited to a proper tea party, but all is not what it seems.

1937 DEPILATED IN OHIO

A teenage girl takes a stand against her adoptive parents’ constant displays of hatred for one another; she threatens to cut off all of her luxuriously long hair, and then promptly follows through with the help of a sympathetic local sheep shearer.

1938 JIVING IN NEBRASKA

A physically disabled, jitterbug-music-crazed young man moves back to Omaha from New York and tries to convince his girlfriend to join him, though she no longer wishes to keep to the sidelines with the whole country jump-jivin’ with able-bodied exuberance.

1939 GALACTOPHOROUS IN VIRGINIA

MGM wants to turn a novelist’s best-seller into the next Gone With the Wind . The problem: the writer has the last word in how the story gets retold for the screen, and pre-emptive censorship on the part of the studio is making it a bad day for all concerned.

1940 AU FAIT IN COLORADO, NEW MEXICO, AND CALIFORNIA

A fifteen-year-old savant on the Santa Fe Super Chief befriends Charlie McCarthy and earns a slot on the Quiz Kids radio broadcast, before the tragic truth about the boy’s limitations derails his parents’ dreams for their child.

1941 UNDER ATTACK IN HAWAII

A Hawaiian third grader writes a personal account of the bombing of Pearl Harbor a few days after the attack.

1942 CERULEAN IN WISCONSIN

A young wife whose husband is serving in World War II suffers debilitating and nearly tragic post-partum depression following the birth of her second child

1943 TELEGRAPHIC IN IOWA

A Western Union messenger boy in a town hard hit by World War II casualties cannot help being regarded by his neighbors as the messenger of death.

1944 SEQUESTERED IN NEW MEXICO

A married couple remembers the Manhattan Project as something both historically monumental and domestically challenging.

1945 HYPERNATREMIC IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN

Two sailors, survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis , wait in shark-infested waters for help that doesn’t come.