REVIEW

Liz deBeer’s Farewell to Emptiness is a thoughtfully rendered coming-of-age novelette-in-flash that asks big questions about community, opportunity, and luck.

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Luanne (Lu) Howard has walked a tough path in her young life. She’s watched her father devolve into a drunken nightmare in the years after the meat-packing plant where he worked closed. Dealt with the aftermath of his untimely death. Helped her mother pay the bills, squeak by. Watched friends leave town, go to college, move on to rosier horizons. On the day we meet Lu, she’s groped by a guest at the catered event she’s working, only to walk home with the terrifying feeling that someone is following her. She’s young, vulnerable, and at her wits’ end.

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Yet, deBeer hasn’t come to tell us a tale of unending woe. Lu’s luck might be down, but she’s not out. Her friends at work rally around her after the groping incident. Her mom’s there for her after her harrowing walk home. Lu’s got a lot of people in her corner. One of whom is her best friend AJ, who’s come back to see Lu on the day the old meat-packing plant is scheduled to be demolished. The demolition becomes a cathartic event for Lu, like a wrecking ball through all her bad luck. She and AJ hop a fence and investigate the old plant before it falls. deBeer’s prose soars in these scenes. Her use of metaphor and symbol. Her use of dialogue to quicken the pace and draw us closer to Lu and AJ. The reader can’t help but be swept up in the emotional tenor of Lu’s journey. When AJ wonders aloud if they might find something unexpected in the abandoned plant, maybe even money, the reader feels the gut punch of Lu’s response: “Not gonna happen with my luck.”

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Later, AJ and Lu end up at the Big Apple convenience store right when the owner, Blossom, is about to open. Blossom knows Lu—and her father, who’d been a problem customer. Lu doesn’t let that association phase her—she knows her dad was a mess—and offers to help Blossom open up. Lu does a great job. Picks stuff up quick. Is pleasant to talk with. Blossom offers her a job, and—boom—Lu has the possibility of a new life, one with benefits, possible tuition reimbursement. Suddenly, impossible dreams, like going to school to be a vet tech, feel a little possible. But this story isn’t merely about hopeful endings. It’s about luck. Is Lu’s life about to change because she was in the right place at the right time—or is it the result of Lu’s choices? deBeer leaves it to us to decide, but the reader can’t help but notice that no matter what’s going wrong, Lu’s open about her vulnerabilities, her earnest desire for something more. Maybe “luck” isn’t happenstance. Maybe it’s the sum of what you put out in the world, deBeer suggests, a force that percolates, slowly, even in grim times. Or maybe luck’s the wrong question. Maybe leading with your heart is part of the answer.

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Book Details

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Farewell to Emptiness can be purchased here. 

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Published by Thirty West Publishing. Selected for the spring cohort of Thirty West's new Chapbook Project, this volume features a monochromatic cover, is 5.5”x 8.5" in size, and comprises 30 pages of prose. 

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