Fishing for Atonement

This is one of two award-winning short stories from the 2025 Next Generation Short Story Awards – Anthology of Winners. Fishing for Atonement is a chapter from a longer work of fiction that is still under construction – but stands on its own as a short story. Scroll down the home page to find Sandpiper Feet, the second story published in this anthology. The competition and book are supported by the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the largest international awards program for indie authors and independent publishers. For those of you who prefer holding a book in your hands, you can find it at Headline Books (scroll down to “Next Generation”) or at Amazon here.

Like the day before, and the day before that, the hitchhiker started this day beneath a cottonwood grove draped in hanging robes of Spanish moss. This day was different however, because a rare breeze stirred the Mississippi air and brought a checkerboard smile to his face. Like the people in his life, most of his teeth had abandoned him years before. Friends and bicuspids were nothing but memories now. He closed his eyes and listened to the mesmerizing symphony of the cicada in the trees overhead. Their song rippled through the branches, gracefully rising and falling with the wind. The sound became the wind and its melody moved the silver moss into a soprano sonata that captivated the hitchhiker until the breeze descended once again into the trembling vibrato of the insect’s call.