{"id":15207,"date":"2016-02-17T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2016\/02\/17\/15207.html"},"modified":"2016-02-17T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T17:00:00","slug":"sh-flashback-until-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2016\/02\/17\/sh-flashback-until-forgiveness\/","title":{"rendered":"SH Flashback: “Until Forgiveness Comes,” by K. Tempest Bradford"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A new entry in my weekly Strange Horizons<\/cite> retrospective.<\/p>\n

This week's Strange Horizons<\/cite> Flashback story:<\/p>\n

\n
“Until Forgiveness Comes<\/a>,” by K. Tempest Bradford<\/dt>\n
Another unusual format: An NPR-like radio news report from a very alternate history, about the anniversary of a devastating train-station bombing. This is another one that makes me cry every time I read it. (Published in 2008.) (2,000 words.)<\/dd>\n
“Marcus has only seen his father's face in pictures and on the anniversaries when Titus's ghost returns to relive those final moments.”<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

(See also the full list of Flashback stories<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

SPOILERS FOLLOW<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

I love the unusual format of this story; I always thought it would make a great audio piece. And I love the sense of the deeply worked-out alternate history, especially in such a brief space. I especially love that even though it's very clearly a 9\/11 story, it's not only<\/em> a 9\/11 story; the alternate history adds both distance and resonance, makes the story more universal while situating itself firmly in an alternate specificity.<\/p>\n

And I love the heartbreaking fragments we see here of people's lives torn apart. The multiple viewpoints: some people wanting to put the past behind us, others saying we need to keep it present.<\/p>\n

And most of all, I love that final paragraph, about Dierdre, the bomber's widow; the complex tangle of emotions, the compact melange of grief and the attempt to forgive.<\/p>\n

I was going to end there, but having said that, I now want to add a particularly personal note: It was weeks ago that I scheduled my post about this story for this week; so it's entirely a coincidence that this turned out to be the week when I talked for the first time, by phone, with relatives of the woman who killed my father. In their pain and their puzzlement, I think I heard some echoes of the ending of Tempest's story. As noted above, I always cry when I read this story; but this time, it made me really sob. Cathartic, at a time when I think I needed that without realizing it. Thank you, Tempest.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new entry in my weekly Strange Horizons retrospective. This week’s Strange Horizons Flashback story: “Until Forgiveness Comes,” by K….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stories","category-strange-horizons"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}