![WMYTYSTFB_Cover_ARC_CORBEL.jpg](/english/cornerstone/PublishingImages/WMYTYSTFB_Cover_ARC_CORBEL.jpg) $24.95 | October 2023 | 234 pp
Paperback | 979-1-960329-07-3 ![Clouther Headshot 5.23.jpg](/english/cornerstone/PublishingImages/JodyPortraits-083.jpg)
JODY HOBBS HESLER lives and writes in the Blue Ridge Mountain foothills. Her stories and other work have appeared in Los Angeles Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Necessary Fiction, CRAFT, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. She teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia.
| What Makes You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better
Jody Hobbs Hesler
The grisly death of the hermit outsider in a tight-knit neighborhood prompts a young mom to yearn for solitude. A man wrestles with regrets from a 30-year-old affair while his wife hovers toward death in the ICU. An older, childless woman aches to rescue the seemingly mistreated child she observes in the grocery store. And a girl's desire to avoid the party her father dragged her to nearly gets her abducted. Told with restraint and deep compassion against the backdrop of Virginia back streets and small towns, Jody Hobbs Hesler's debut collection shines with its portraits of longing, disconnection, and the ache for renewal and redemption that comes from our own frailties.
![button-barnes-and-noblenobg.png](/english/cornerstone/PublishingImages/button-barnes-and-noblenobg.png) To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu Praise for What Makes You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better
"Hobbs Hesler disappears behind her deliberate prose, and each character embodies their primary desire: alone time, forgiveness, a do-over, attention, love from a daughter, a thank you, to be part of the family again, a baby. As they seek out solutions, taking missteps along the way, her characters each meet a moment of truth, and we get to observe their intimate thought processes to keep themselves sane, to keep them alive until tomorrow." —Another Chicago Magazine
"Thoughtfully crafted and skillfully realized...the collection explores surprising moments that do offer a possibility of feeling better." —Necessary Fiction
"If you ever met Jody Hobbs Hesler, you might find it strange that she writes about alienation, loneliness, and the tragic way people so often misunderstand each other—she is so warm and emotionally intelligent herself. It must be these qualities that give her such preternatural insight into the troubled characters of the stories in her debut collection, What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better. These colorful figures include a repentant ex-con, a defensive hotel housekeeper, and an entitled developer with a thing for life-size candy mascots and a knack for choosing the exact wrong gifts, but what they all have in common is the struggle to empathize and see beyond their own preconceptions."
—Rain Taxi "Hesler's writing is carefully crafted, with plots that create suspense and often a surprising twist at the end. Although potential for horror lurks in some of the plots, it is an uplifting book that speaks about the ways people can help make each other's lives better." —Rivanna Review
"In this brilliant debut...Hesler demonstrates the ironic understanding of humanity, the deep compassion, and the literary skill of a serious, new fiction writer." —Exacting Clam "Eloquent, articulate,
original, memorable, deftly crafted, What Makes You Think You're Supposed
to Feel Better: Stories by author Jody Hobbs Hesler is a literary treat
throughout and an especially and unreservedly recommended pick for personal reading lists, as well as community, and
college/university library Literary Fiction & Short Story Anthology
collections."
—Midwest Book Review There’s a loneliness running through this collection, a recognition that no matter how many people we may have in our circle, we can never fully connect with another, never quite shake that sense of detachment that comes with being an individual. —Heavy Feather Review Reviews, Interviews, & Media
Another Chicago Magazine Hypertext Electric Literature The Writer's Story Midwest Book Review Vol. 1 Brooklyn Writer's Digest Bloom The Cavalier Daily (VA) CRAFT Cambridge Common Writers Heavy Feather Review Exacting Clam Daily Progress Necessary Fiction GSMC Book Review![](https://cdn2.iconfinder.com/data/icons/multimeda/100/magazine-512.png)
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