Now in a stand-alone edition, Alice Elliott Dark’s celebrated and masterful story In the Gloaming depicts a loving mother, Janet, caring for her adult son, Laird, in the last months of his life. In the Gloaming was chosen as a best short story of the 20th century by John Updike and is the basis for the award-winning film featuring Glenn Close and Robert Sean Leonard. With a new afterword from the author, this special edition of In the Gloaming is a part of the Scribner Shorts program. The gloaming is the hour of changing light at dawn or dusk, when the world is as purple as the Scottish Highlands on a summer night. As mother and son sit together in the gathering darkness, a powerfully intimate conversation unfolds between them that shifts their understanding of each other and gives them strength for their final farewell. In austerely beautiful prose, Dark lays bare the emotional turmoil and deep familial bonds between her characters, revealing the ache of adoration and devotion that so poignantly marks our inner lives.