By Mary Lynn Reed In Mary Lynn Reed's debut short story collection, Phantom Advances, young queer women travel America's back roads, roaming through the South, Midwest, New York, and California, while questions of gender and identity ride shotgun. Peering through bug-stained windshields and the viewfinders of old film cameras, these wanderers find love, heartbreak, and little pieces of themselves wherever the road takes them. Along the way, their origin stories are also revealed. Boyish girls ace math while mucking horse stalls at a nudist summer camp and teenage tomboys pool-shark at the family-owned Game Room. In bowling alleys, factories, college-town bars, and gay discos, the stories in Phantom Advances calculate the risks of love, and contemplate the odds of being seen for who you truly are.
