In the vein of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Step Back Joanna is literary fiction about a 25-year-old aspiring social worker struggling to build a life in Chicago despite the obsessive-compulsive tendencies she was punished for as a child. Amid a crumbling relationship and with her job at risk, Joanna learns history is repeating when her much-younger brother appears at her apartment door. Helping Nathan means helping herself as they embark on a project to cover mirrors throughout the city in order to temper their urges to self-harm and begin to heal.
Read this adapted short story, published in Great Lakes Review!