A book of short stories
“Joseph Costa presents a family’s life journey with elegance and clarity by examining how much time plays a pivotal role in changing people’s perspectives and how they develop their own philosophy in life. Comets is an important piece of work because it represents the important transition that we all go through in life.”
— Vincent Dublado for Readers’ Favorite, 2021 American Fiction Awards finalist
From The Author
Part biography, part fiction, and part confession, Comets was inspired by the cabinet shop my father owned for more than 60 years. In that, this collection is an homage to my dad and to all of the makers, builders, and workers who ply a trade. In many respects, the shop is where I was raised. The stories from that time germinated for decades and the result is this linked collection of short fiction. The book weaves through a microcosm of blue-collar problems, with implications that go beyond racial, economic, and cultural boundaries, illuminating a greater understanding of the human experiences we all share.
About Comets
Comets is a novelized collection of short stories that follows the unpredictable struggles of Italian, Cuban, and American cabinetmakers in Ybor City (Tampa’s Latin Quarter) while centering on the life of Roberto as he grows from a working teenager influenced by the men in his father’s shop to a disillusioned 42unwittingly trying to fill his father’s shoes and searching for a deeper understanding of himself and his life.
Reviews
Wonderful!
The linked stories in Comets remind me of fiction by the late great Denis Johnson and Thom Jones. The characters in these stories are hard-boiled, but they care-about each other, and about life, which hasn’t quite worked out for them, but might, yet, and soon. Maybe even in the next story. It’s impossible for the reader not to care about them, and root for them, too. What a wonderful book!
— Brock Clarke, author of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? and The Happiest People in the World
Insightful!
Joseph Costa’s Comets is a loving intergenerational look at Ybor City and the men who built it and were built by it. The collection is as insightful and satisfying and full of Lawrence’s “subtle interrelatedness” as any novel. It hums with buried circuitry.”
— Kevin Moffett, author of Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events
Complex!
Comets cuts across the literary cosmos searing his signature in the stars. Many of the pieces examine the complexities of family and the devastating ways that honor, tradition, and responsibility create fissures in the human spirit. But no matter how far we plummet into deep-space darkness, with wisdom and kindness, Costa always finds a way to scatter light.
— Jason Ockert, author of Wasp Box and Neighbors of Nothing