The Office Of Historical Corrections

Danielle Evan's short fiction ha long inspired devotion and celebration. In The Office Of Historical Corrections, she brings her blisteringly smart voice and X-ray insights to the subjects of race and U.S. history. With this novella and stories, Evans considers how and why some people choose to confront history, and others to outrun it.

In one story, a white college student tries to reinvent herself after a photo featuring her in a confederate flag bikini goes viral. In another, a daughter takes her mother on a tour of a prison that tore her family apart decades earlier. And in the eye-opening title novella, a black scholar from Washington, DC, is drawn into a complex historical mystery that spans generations and puts her job, her love life, and her oldest friendship at risk.

moving between humour and grief, Evans portrays characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by sorrow-all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of U.S. history-about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight.