An Inventory of Abandoned Things
Winner of the 2020 Fiction Chapbook Contest, selected by Brenna Womer
In Kelly Ann Jacobson's An Inventory of Abandoned Things, there are cockroaches in the walls and anoles trapped in the doors. Squirrels roll across the attic rafters, and red ants patrol the car floor. A lazy gopher tortoise chews lettuce in the neighbor’s butterfly garden. At once the story of a pregnant graduate student separated from her wife and an inventory of the Florida panhandle, this book of linked stories questions what it means to fight the land for a place in it—and whether, in the fighting, there can be a bond between human and landscape formed that is stronger than love.
ISBN: 978-1-952897-13-9
45pg
Published April 1, 2021
"An Inventory of Abandoned Things is sweaty and infested, perfect in all its grime and oddity. The narrator offers perspective on the past from an unknown future, all the while reminding the reader of the future's unknowability. The stories that comprise An Inventory are comprised themselves of paradoxes and the observations of a person who knows how to be silent, to listen, and to carefully watch. I can't wait to own a copy of this chapbook."
—Brenna Womer, author of Unbrained and honeypot
"Jacobson’s strange and relatable recollections of Florida go beyond the objects she describes, into love, motherhood, and what it means to call a place home."
—Drizzle Review