Dancing in Their Dead Mother’s Dresses

Title: Dancing in Their Dead Mother's Dresses
Published by: Wolfson Press
Release Date: 2026
Genre:
Pages: 136
ISBN13: 978-1-950066-28-5
Buy the Book: Wolfson Press

 
Overview

The twelve stories in Dancing in Their Dead Mother’s Dresses chronicle the intersections of longing and loss. A boy hides a dead crow in his closet while missing his absent father, two young girls dance in their dead mother’s dresses, a neurodivergent man passes decades in love with his brother’s wife, a young girl copes with the loss of her mother by devoting all of her energy to her dog “Ketchup,” a homeless father forces his son to sell chocolates door to door for pretend cancer victims, and a married man loves his wife but can’t stop obsessing about the tenant next door.

Stories from the collection appeared originally in journals that include The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, New Letters, Cincinnati Review, South Carolina Review, and Narrative Magazine. One of the stories, “Balloon,” was listed as a Distinguished Story in The Best American Short Stories 2019. Another, “Snow Crow,” received First Place in the Bath Flash Fiction 19th Award. Two additional stories were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

Praise

"Doug Ramspeck has written a story collection of arresting beauty and insight. Rarely does a book hold me so firmly in its thrall, but Dancing in Their Dead Mother’s Dresses did from its first page to its last. The writing is masterful, and the characters—the women and men grappling with loss, the lonely teenagers, the motherless little girls—are indelible. I loved these stories."
—Christine Sneed, author of The Virginity of  Famous Men and Please Be Advised: A Novel in Memos

"There’s poetry and magic in Doug Ramspeck’s Dancing in Their Dead Mother’s Dresses. Featuring gray Midwestern landscapes, night skies filled with stars like bones, and “clouds carrying dusk in their underbellies,” Ramspeck’s dazzling collection imbues every sensory moment with a near-religious intensity. In these grim yet optimistic stories, the characters crackle with internal life even as they are haunted by death. I was entranced and awed by their furious light, which refuses to be dimmed."
—Darrin Doyle, author of Let Gravity Seize the Dead

Excerpt

From “Balloon”

Her name is Sophia and also Come here and Quiet and Bring me one. It is the time of summer when there is heat lightning in the distance but no rain, a little flash that barely makes a sound but seems to watch from the far horizon, beyond the soybean fields. Often, first thing out of bed, Sophia stands at her window and gazes at the flatness of the land and at the gray light and at the stillness of the road. The road usually says Nothing or I am a held breath. Later it will collect the day’s heat and hold it so it hurts her feet if she walks on it. Dust will rise from its body. Sophia is nine. She counts the number on her fingers. When late August at last arrives, the bus will stop in front of her house again and wait with its yellow eye. She will climb aboard and feel the gravity of everyone turning in her direction. Their attention will lock on, saying You don’t have a mother anymore or Don’t sit by me . . . .