Summer Shorts is back. Every other Thursday at 6 PM, we gather to read a short story together: silently, all at once, with nowhere else to be. The story is unveiled when you arrive. No preparation required. Just show up, settle in, and let the rest of your week fall away.

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We close out the summer with J.D. Salinger, who landed at Utah Beach on D-Day with the 4th Infantry Division, fought through some of the bloodiest battles of the war, and carried six chapters of what would become The Catcher in the Rye in his rucksack the whole time. After the war, he checked himself into a military hospital in Nuremberg for what we'd now call PTSD. Then he came home and started publishing stories in The New Yorker: stories about family, about war, about the distance between what people say and what they actually feel. When Catcher made him the most famous writer in America, he moved to ninety acres in Cornish, New Hampshire, and essentially stopped publishing. His last story came out in 1965. He kept writing for the rest of his life, but he kept it to himself.

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We'll read one of the stories he did share to end the summer the way it should end: quietly, in good company, with something worth thinking about on the walk home. Happy hour pricing at the cafe. No RSVP required, but it always helps us plan.

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