Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by the University of Iowa Press, publisher of Outside Is the Ocean, 2017 Iowa Short Fiction Award-winning collection by Matthew Lansburgh.
Three days after her twentieth birthday, a woman who grew up in WWII Germany travels to America for a new beginning. Outside Is the Ocean traces Heike’s struggle to find love and happiness. After two marriages and a troubled relationship with her son, Heike adopts Galina, a disabled child from Russia, hoping for the affection and companionship she craves. As Galina grows, Heike’s grasp on reality frays. She writes a series of letters to the son she thinks has abandoned her. It isn’t until Heike’s death that her son finds these letters and realizes how skewed her perceptions actually were.