The Women Were Leaving the Men

In The Women Were Leaving the Men, Andy Mozina draws readers into the everyday lives of characters who are instantly relatable but intriguingly flawed. Knocked beyond the brink by departed family members, curious obsessions, and unruly physical attributes, Mozina’s characters climb and scrape their way toward intimacy, sanity, and redemption against the often-absurd odds of their lives in this unique, humorous, and poetic collection.

Though Mozina’s stories have been published by various literary magazines, this is his first full-length collection of short fiction. In The Women Were Leaving the Men, readers will encounter numerous haunting characters. A divorced astronaut, back from the moon, tries to rehabilitate his stroke-ridden mother. A young woman must decide whether to stay with a man she suspects of being a murderer. A son helps his mother bake a cake sculpted into the image of his runaway father. A man born with a single enormous hand can barely tell the difference between cleaning and making love. Despite their fantastic twists, every story in The Women Were Leaving the Men is rooted in emotional realism and fueled by the humor and pathos of the characters’ conflicts and relationships. Readers will recognize familiar feelings in interactions between lovers, friends, and strangers, all rendered with strikingly real detail and a sense of humor.

Mozina takes us deeply into his characters’ complex lives so that we may more fully observe and discover the idiosyncrasies in our own. General readers and anyone interested in short fiction will enjoy this remarkable collection.