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Abby Frucht is the author of two short story collections, Fruit of the Month, for which she received the Iowa Short Fiction Prize in 1987, and The Bell at the End of a Rope (Narrative Library, 2012). She has also written six novels: Snap; Licorice; Are You Mine?; Life before Death; Polly’s Ghost; and A Well Made Bed (Red Hen Press, 2016), which she wrote with her colleague Laurie Alberts. Frucht has taught for more than twenty years at Vermont College of Fine Arts and serves as a mentor to the writers of the Afghan Women’s Writers Project. She lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Photograph by John Iwata.

Best Advice

by Abby Frucht

The best advice I’ve ever received is from my boyfriend, Chuck, who tells me time and again not to worry so much. This is nothing exactly new. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Trainer, scolded me for worrying, and so did a neighbor lady down the street. I still worry, though, mainly over my sons. Take Alex, for instance, who lives in Peru. Is the health care any good there? Will he ever have a girlfriend? Does he get enough calcium?

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