Max Stephan is currently working on a collection of short stories based on father-daughter experiences.  The stories range from the very minute the child was born, to when the father must admit that his little girl isn’t a little girl any longer.  Though identified as fiction, all of the stories are based on real life experiences.  The following are a few excerpts from portions of the novel which have been published independently as fiction or creative nonfiction.

An excerpt from “Water, Falling” (The Whitefish Review – published in 2019)

“What I felt rush through the crevices between my fingers was not the same as what fell into a tub, or out of a hose, or from the sky. This presence was like nothing I had ever seen or felt or experienced before. Together we sat and caressed that water like it was a gem, a treasure we had found as a team, but knew we could not bag, nor steal, and never take home.”

An excerpt from “Findings” (Blueline – published in 2020)

“In silence we stare at the structure beneath our boots: a massive mesh of logs and sticks and mud and muck. If measured from bank to bank, its length somewhere between 150 and 200 feet; its width, however, quite deceiving: flaring underwater, the base easily 25 feet wide – nothing like the tight-rope strip on which we stand.”