My American Tales are four novellas, longer than short stories, shorter than novels. I tried to capture in them experiences centering on four different stages of life; childhood, teen years, early adulthood and middle-age. Each story has its own ordeal, or trauma. A young boy just shy of puberty is stricken with quadriplegia from falling off a swing set. A teenage basketball player copes with severe acne and adolescent insecurity. A young married man struggles against a mother-in-law bent on breaking up his marriage. A maintenance worker loses a beloved wife in an auto accident, and having given up any interest in the possibility of another woman entering his life, suddenly falls passionately in love with a Russian immigrant and young mother who professes to hate men, until she recognizes a pure, unconditional love offered from an unexpected source. A novella may take more than one sitting to read, but it can possess both the sudden revelatory impact of a short-story and the grandeur of a novel.