Last Lemonade Stand on the Block Stories

The Last Lemonade Stand on the Block was a title before it was a manuscript, of any kind, born at the moment when I realized what all the adults had been keeping from me—namely, how things really are, and everyone’s complicity. Rereading this early work brought a level of suspense in that I often had no idea where the stories were headed, as if they’d been written by someone else, which, of course, they were. The physical act of retyping these stories was an exercise in restraint. So often I wanted to show the Young Writer the way, but that would have been a terrible shortcut and one that did a disservice to the struggles of the Young Writer. The stories have been lightly copyedited for clarity but are otherwise presented as originally written.In the end, what this collection represents is the endless questions and the self-implication inherent in the answers: Why is life so hard? Why are people so terrible at it? And worse, why are the same people who are capable of kindness sometimes so horrible? Why is selfishness our default behavior?But mostly what you’ll find in these stories is a young man discovering the world, and completely objecting all along the way.—Jaime Clarkewww.jaimeclarke.com