In the hopeful and charming title story, a father and daughter find solace together in the face of tragedy, each helping the other understand that the only place left to go is onward. “Will Be, Will Be,” a tender and luminous tale in three parts, tells the story of two strangers and the intimate bond they form while sitting hundreds of miles apart. In “Xox,” a middle-aged man finds that the talking pullstring toy he buys for his son’s birthday is better at communicating with his family than he is.

     Every story in Just Fly is a celebration of the sundry disappointments and frustrations of life, of the perceived inadequacies and failures that somehow propel us through it all. Unfulfillment, unbelonging, uncertainty—Candrea explores these themes with great compassion and sincerity, listening carefully to the doubts, fears, and insecurities forever humming in his characters’ skulls. Backlit by grief, silhouetted against dread, in these stories even the unremarkable and mundane become stark and evocative, revealing the anxieties bristling along the contours of all those seemingly insignificant moments that at once give shape to our lives and, ultimately, show us the way forward.