When Jack announces he has “beaver fever” and needs to find a woman, his sister Suzie reluctantly agrees to be his wingman for a night out in Wheeling, West Virginia. What follows is a darkly comic tour through dive bars and failed pickup attempts, while Suzie grapples with her own complicated relationship to the declining Rust Belt town she never wanted to return to. A chance encounter with Mike, the local brewmaster, offers a glimmer of possibility—but can anyone really escape the gravitational pull of home?
Told with sharp wit and unflinching honesty, Beaver Fever is a story about the places that shape us from writer Robert Long Foreman. Foreman draws on his own experience growing up in Wheeling to create a portrait that’s both brutally realistic and deeply compassionate, capturing the complex feelings we have toward the places we’re from.
Beaver Fever is a work of short fiction. 32 pages.