Polite Conversation About the Weather

Told through the eyes of eclectic characters intersecting over time between rural Illinois and New York City, D. A. MacQuin's stories explore disillusionment in the pursuit of greatness, profound loneliness, and darkness driven by outsider status. In the title story, Matthew Gold is a Jewish-American man on death row who laments his life decisions in the final hours before his execution. Years later the lingering effects of his crime and imprisonment are analyzed by his daughter, Leah, as she models in Manhattan and records her glamorous lifestyle in a journal. And Henry Bright develops an unusual quilting style inspired by science fiction and comics that catapults him into the New York City art world. In these connected stories, MacQuin chronicles complex emotional territory as her characters, each touched by their Midwestern roots, pursue what feels like a more significant life beyond the barriers of their backgrounds.