The eighteen stories in The Preservation of Objects Lost at Sea are loose interpretations of three classic fairy tales: "Goldilocks and The Three Bears," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Hansel and Gretel." My fictions explore themes inherent in those old tales. In the first section, "Goldie and the Bears," many stories revolve around the loss or hoarding of material objects and the unwelcome insertion of one's self into the life of the other. "La Belle et la Bête" contains stories that focus on the relationship between an ordinary character and a grotesque character (a character monstrous or fantastic in the artistic tradition of grotesques). In "The Children and the Ogre," many stories deal with children who are literally or figuratively lost, who encounter danger or violence in trying to find their way home.
The thesis moves back and forth, like waves, between short and long stories. This movement is meant to highlight the movement in the fictions between realism, magical realism, and fabulism. The flash-fiction pieces included serve as epigraphs for the longer pieces, highlighting a theme or image in the story that follows. My stories also move between first, second, and third person, sometimes utilizing multiple perspectives and points of view in a single story, a technique that proposes the multivocality that exists within one society, one community, one family, even one self. Overall, the stories progress from a single narrator experiencing loss to characters who seek to preserve something together, symbolized by the final image of amber pulled from the sea. Historically, stories have sought to preserve what is lost through time, and the title of my thesis and many of my stories point to that pursuit.