An acutely-sensitive eleven-year-old girl is scorned by her fifth-grade teacher. Assaulted by her mother's boyfriend, a fourteen-year-old girl longs to be loved by her teenaged crush. An immigrant woman who fled her homeland is forced to travel across county by the man who promised her a better life. A war veteran's family falls apart as he combats the consequences of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And an Anglican nun struggles to comfort a woman who's been sentenced to the gallows. The characters in these stories exist in different locations and periods in time. They have vastly different lives, yet they are all connected by the devastating effects of physical and/or emotional trauma. Everything about a person, from the way they think, remember, learn, how they feel about themselves and others, and the way they view and understand the world, is affected and shaped by their experience. Australia is known as the lucky country, but as we know luck is relative. Open Wounds is a collection of unflinching Australian short stories that shines a light on those moments in life that are as profound as they are traumatic.