Cornerstone Press
174 pages
March 10, 2026
The town of Whistle Pig, like the mountains that surround it, can appear unchanging, as immutable as geography. The lives of the characters in the linked stories in Patricia Henley’s Apple & Palm contrast with that predictability. After vowing he’d never go home to Appalachia, DJ Diggs returns from Chicago to his family of origin after a Pride Prom fire that leaves his niece disfigured; Roxy, a centenarian, convinces her grandson’s pregnant wife to move into the artist’s co-op; Ham Zebrak and Adele Pratt, an elderly pair, spend the night together trying to stir up the ghost of sexual chemistry. Apple & Palm is a provocative close-up examination of aging, memory, and desire.
Patricia Henley is the author of three novels, five collections of stories, two chapbooks of poetry, and a stage play. Her first novel, Hummingbird House (1999), was a finalist for the National Book Award and The New Yorker Fiction Prize, and her first story collection, Friday Night at Silver Star (1986), won the Montana First Book Award. She lives in Kingston, Washington.