The stories of Things Kept, Things Left Behind are set in and around the fictional town of Spivey, Kentucky. They explore the ambiguities of kept secrets, the tangle of abandoned pasts and uneasy accommodations. In each story, characters strive to reclaim dreams left behind, along with something of the dreamer who was lost. Starkly rendered, these characters truly inhabit a specific place and class—small-town Kentucky, working-class America. But the stories, despite their darkness, are told with surprising humor and grace. In the end, each resonates with an emotional heart that makes it truly universal. Characters face conflict, sometimes within themselves, sometimes with each other. Each carries a past and with it an urge to return and repair. In “First Husband, First Wife,” ex-spouses are repeatedly drawn together by a shared history they cannot seem to escape, until they are forced to choose between leaving the past or leaving each other. In “Things Kept,” grown sisters try to help a prideful mother. “Prologue” is a voyeuristic journey through the surprisingly different lives of two star-crossed friends, told through letters exchanged over thirty-five years. In “Stainless,” Annie and Warren divide their possessions on the final night of their marriage. Their realtor has advised them to “declutter” the house they are leaving, but they discover that most of the clutter is not so easily removed. The choices are never simple, and for every thing kept, something must be abandoned. Tomlinson’s characters struggle but eventually find their way, often unknowingly, to points of departure, to places where things just might change.