"A Short Trip Home"

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Published December 17, 1927 in the Saturday Evening Post, "A Short Trip Home" is most notable as one of a handful of supernatural short stories F. Scott Fitzgerald published throughout his career. Indeed, the Post almost declined the story because they weren't keen on tales of specters, wraiths, or apparitions, but ultimately they couldn't resist his prose. In this tale, a St Paul college boy, Eddie Stinson, takes it upon himself to protect local girl Ellen Baker from a mysterious man named Joe Varland---who appears to be from another dimension. We explore this story in the tradition of spoooky tales from Poe to Henry James while examining Fitzgerald's love of trains and the Midwest. Although not a famous story, "A Short Trip Home" demonstrates how adept Fitzgerald was when he decided to take on a specific genre in popular fiction.