Joyce Hinnefeld, "The Dime Museum" (Unbridled Books, 2025)

The Dime Museum (Unbridled Books, 2025) is a novel spanning several generations, told in stories that begin in the early 1900s and end during the 2020 pandemic. Set in Chicago, Reading and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Europe, the linked stories tell an overall tale of how the rich and the poor survive in a challenging modern world. Charlie, who’s interested in the writing of Ezra Pound, appears in most of the stories, and is a wealthy American college graduate living in Venice. Min (Minerva), his Dominican ex-girlfriend is overwhelmed as a nurse even before the pandemic takes hold. Charlie’s great-great grandmother is the source of his wealth, and his great aunt controlled his upbringing. Hinnefeld’s characters strive for happiness, struggle to be connected, heal from heartbreak, seek refuge, and find solace in planting gardens, poetry and art.

JOYCE HINNEFELD is the author of the short story collections Tell Me Everything (winner of the 1997 Bread Loaf Bakeless Prize in Fiction) and The Beauty of Their Youth (2020), the novels In Hovering Flight (2008) and Stranger Here Below (2010), and other short stories and essays. She is Emerita Professor of English at Moravian University in Bethlehem, PA, director of the Moravian Writers' Conference, and a Program Facilitator with Shining Light, an organization that provides reentry-based programming for incarcerated people throughout the U.S. Find her online at joycehinnefeld.com

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