Protons and Fleurons
Twenty-Two Elements of Fiction

Big Rosa rescues unhappy women of the Wild West to work in a helium mine, and Georgie Appleseed rescues his failing diner with the help of neon. A silicon son tries to make his gold dad proud, while a scientist tries to make a new St. Francis from calcium bone fragments. Obadiah Toad gives away all his peace with a nickel, but Mama finally gives away her heart on account of arsenic. These twenty stories explore the elemental forces that underpin all of life…