[Rough Passages 01] • Rough Passages · the Collected Stories

Welcome to a world where your mid-life crisis might cause a national emergency, and getting older means more than going gray.

A third of the population carries the potential to develop superpowers between the ages of thirty-five and sixty, and no one can predict which few will activate.

Passing life’s halfway point might be as easy as blowing out one extra candle…or it might lead to becoming a human fireball, drowning a city, or accidentally teleporting into outer space. This story collection connects five people whose lives are disrupted by the uncertainties of power:

A single mother with two jobs whose new talent improves her ordinary life beyond her wildest dreams.

A Marine captain tasked with investigating the all-too-human crimes superhuman soldiers can inflict on one another.

A lonely woman whose desperate homesickness is matched in strength only by her ability to wreak seismic havoc.

A devout grandmother torn from home and family, abused and imprisoned, who gains godlike powers and must choose between revenge and forgiveness.

A teen, afraid to take the R-factor test that will define her future, who learns there are worse things than a positive result.