The Spread Eagle and Other Stories

A precocious American boy in Paris, refusing to bow to his mother's European pretensions, lighting fireworks on the Fourth of July in defiance. That's the electric opening of this early 20th-century collection, and it announces a voice that's funny, fizzy, and quietly aching. Fitzhugh Williams is the child of wealthy American expatriates, a boy raised between worlds yet belonging fully to neither. His mother drags him through the refined drawing rooms of Europe, molding him into something polished and foreign, but Fitzhugh clings to his American roots with stubborn humor and quiet rebellion. The stories trace his coming-of-age amid cultural contradictions, where privilege meets authenticity, and where a child must forge an identity against the expectations of everyone around him. Morris writes with sparkling wit and genuine tenderness, capturing the loneliness of being caught between cultures and the peculiar grief of never quite fitting in. These are stories for anyone who has ever felt like a stranger in familiar places.