The Wishing Box

Never suspecting that it will actually work, Julia, an almost-30 single mom, and her sister create a wishing box and hold a ceremony to call for the return of the father who abandoned them as children. Astonishingly, he comes back, but by then Julia's life has moved abruptly in another direction. At the heart of The Wishing Box is an exploration of the desire to control the future and to explain the past, an exploration of the surprising and unintended consequences of getting what you ask for.

Dashka Slater is a writer whose poetry and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of magazines and journals. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is a reporter for The East Bay Express. This is her first novel.