Only Human - by Kristine Scarrow (Paperback)

About the Book

A gripping collection of short stories urging readers to confront life's hardest choices.

Book Synopsis

Only Human by Kristine Scarrow is a thought-provoking collection of eleven short stories that explore how ordinary people respond when life pushes them to their limits. Each story reveals the quiet struggles beneath everyday life-careers that falter, relationships that fracture, and moments of loss or discovery that change everything.

Set in Saskatchewan, Canada, these contemporary tales balance humour, heartbreak, and honesty as characters confront aging, illness, trauma, gender roles, and the pull between what's right and what's necessary. Scarrow's writing captures the raw truth of being human, showing how small choices can lead to unexpected consequences.

Only Human invites readers to reflect on their own lives and ask: What would I do in the same situation? Relatable and emotionally resonant, this collection is for anyone drawn to stories about the moral and emotional struggles that define us all.

Review Quotes

There's a patience and emotional intelligence in Scarrow's writing, grounded in details of daily life that make the characters true and recognizable. The word 'pathos' hardly seems sufficient to describe the impact of some of these stories. Her pallete includes some quite enjoyable humour, or at least a bit of bizzare irony when needed. A compelling book I read in one sitting.

-Bruce Rice, author of Standstill: A Hopewell Earthworks Daybook and Other Essays.

"Kristine Scarrow writes about ordinary people trying to survive the unbearable. However, these stories are neither cautionary tales nor distant tragedies. Grounded in realism, the author doesn't neatly mend the broken, but offers the reader the more genuine experience of bearing witness to uncertain outcomes."

-Paula Jane Remlinger, author of This Hole Called January, winner of the 2020 Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry

"Life weighs heavily on Kristine Scarrow's characters in these finely wrought stories of everyday life, stories that are intimate, close-up, and personal. As readers we bear witness to these characters' often heartbreaking struggles throughout which Scarrow's authorial lens remains one of deep compassion for the loneliness, longing, suffering, but also connection and love that ground our humanity."

-Jeanette Lynes, Bestselling Author of The Paper Birds and The Apothecary's Garden