In Siena by Steve Lane (Fiction ’20)
An excerpt of fiction alum Steven Lane’s novel was recently featured in Issue #15 of the Leon Literary Review, edited by fiction alum Sarah Cypher.
Read an excerpt below.
In Siena
Francesca turned to look at me. She seemed to have thrown a white track suit over her work clothes — beet-colored hospital scrubs, with an ID lanyard that showed her unsmiling face in an olive-colored light. “What about you?” she said to me. “Are you having as shitty a day as the rest of us?”
“He’s having a great day,” said the Signora. “He gets to go to the lake with us, after all.”
“After all,” said Francesca. “What could be better. And when we get there, Laura will murder us with a history lesson.” She looked at the Signora.
“Murder you dead,” said the Signora, whose first name I now knew. Her open-mouthed smile suggested she didn’t mind Francesca’s tone at all. Something had changed in her; in the car, with her friend, she was suddenly just Laura. I could see her, with impossible Massimo, at seventeen but at seventeen, he was driving, and she was sitting primly as a doll, perhaps awaiting the moment he would be thrown violently from the car and she could slide into the seat, and take control.
Continue reading the rest of the excerpt here: Issue 15 | Steve Lane – LEON Literary Review
