In Floater, Kate Bernheimer introduces us to Mike, a girl with a mysterious connection to a recent set of bridge suicides. With taut and lucid prose, we are taken through a day in Mike's life, from dreamless sleep to phone calls with no one on the other end to the usual booth in the diner. Noah Saterstrom's illustrations perfectly complement the quiet melancholy of the story: his frenetic images seem incomplete, unfinished, with conflicting lines and smudges that leave you wondering what might be there, beneath the surface.
Kate Bernheimer is the author of three novels and the story collection Horse, Flower, Bird, as well as children's books. Among other books, she edited the World Fantasy Award winning My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales and the forthcoming xo Orpheus: 50 New Myths.