Summary

“How” is a short story about the Ikonen twins, Hanna and Anna, and their plot to escape their unbearable family.

The story begins with a glimpse of Hanna’s daily lifestyle. She lives in North Country with her unemployed husband, her alcoholic father, her twin sister, her sister’s husband, and their son. In their large family, Hanna is the only one who works. She has a morning shift at a café and tends a bar at night. She leaves her savings with her best friend Laura, plotting her escape. Every morning, Hanna’s unemployed husband Peter comes to visit her for free breakfast – he eyes her cleavage and makes inappropriate jokes. Peter thinks that they are trying to have a child, unaware that his wife had had her tubes tied. After her first shift, Hanna flirts with boys at the Michigan Institute of...