Café Carolina and Other Stories

Stories in the American grain

Written over a span of three decades, these twelve short stories by Jefferson Flanders explore themes of memory, family, faith, and love against a distinctly American landscape.

Café Carolina and Other Stories offers the reader the varied worlds of its memorable characters. A waitress in a small-town restaurant invents a romantic backstory for the secretive couple in the last booth. A burnt-out relief worker returns from Africa to find himself drawn to the New England landscape of his childhood. A retired military aviator clashes over Cold War politics with the guests at a Princeton dinner party. A preacher's son visits Jerusalem on a pilgrimage that his father hopes will revive his faith.

With humor and compassion these stories address the simple joys and complex challenges of life at century’s turn.

Jefferson Flanders has been a sportswriter, columnist, editor, and publishing executive. He is the author of Café Carolina and Other Stories and of Herald Square, a novel of the Cold War described as “Jimmy Breslin meets John le Carré” in the Huffington Post and as “well-written, action packed and engrossing” in the Washington Times.