Water Falls by Lois Wolfe

2025 WINNER OF THE ANTHONY GROOMS SHORT PRIZE FICTION

A young veteran of the Great War returns home to older battles. He’s lost in the shadow of his father’s failures and his own doomed dreams. He forces wild notions to the brink of collapse. He builds a lasting monument to a love he cannot have. When an alcoholic army buddy pays him a visit, the table is set to confront the battlefield choice that haunts him: whose life he saved and why.

“Water Falls is magnificent execution of character development. These well-developed and fully realized characters, with their own stories to tell, could exist on the page and not need a plot. But it’s through their actions and dialogue that they become unforgettable. Storytelling at its best. We know these people or have known them and after the story ends, we want to know what are they doing now.”

— James Cherry, 2025 Anthony Grooms Short Fiction Prize Judge

Lois Wolfe is an author and educator whose background spans print journalism and college teaching. She grew up in a West Virginia coal mining town a few miles south of the Mason-Dixon. Her poetry has appeared in Mid-American Reviewand Coastlines; her short fiction can be found in The Appalachian Review, Roanoke Review, Levee Magazine and Prime Number. Her short fiction received the Northern Virginia Review’s 2021 Robert Bausch Fiction Prize. She’s the author of two novels, The Schemers and Mask of Night. She resides in the Southern Appalachian Highlands of North Carolina.