The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Evans, Danielle. The Office of Historical Corrections. Riverhead Books, 2020.

Evans’ book is divided into seven stories, including a novella-length title story that falls last in the collection.

“Happily Ever After” (1) follows Lyssa, a woman who works in a replica of the Titanic. A director shooting a music video in the building invites Lyssa to play a part in the video. Lyssa has sex with the director and lies to him about having had her ovaries removed. In reality, she has been reluctant to have this procedure done despite her mother’s death from ovarian cancer because she does not want to feel cheated out of the possibility of having children. These feelings contributed to her earlier breakup with Travis, a man she was dating at the time of her mother’s death.

In “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain” (18), Rena is attending the wedding of Dori and JT, a man she was quarantined with years ago due to a threat on a plane. Rena thinks that Dori is suspicious of the time she spent with JT and wonders if they slept together. The weekend of the wedding, Rena has sex with one of the groomsmen, Michael. That same night, she witnesses JT leaving the hotel. The next day, Rena spontaneously lies to Dori, saying that JT was going to Ohio, and gives Dori an address. The address is for the house where Rena’s sister Elizabeth lived before her husband, Connor, shot her. On the way to the house, Rena confesses to Dori that she lied. After turning around, the two of them spend time at a waterpark, where they receive messages from JT saying he has returned and the wedding is on.

In “Boys Go to Jupiter” (50), Claire’s reputation at her college suffers when a man she is seeing photographs her in a bikini with a Confederate flag design on it and posts the picture on Facebook. Claire retaliates against the person who pointed out the post, a Black girl named Carmen, by slipping a picture of a Confederate flag under her door. Claire’s former best friend Angela was Black. Claire stopped speaking to Angela after Angela’s mother survived cancer and Claire’s did not. Angela’s brother Aaron later died trying to drive Claire home while she was drunk, when he was run off the road by a group of white boys. Claire attends a town hall meeting to defend her actions. She sees several Black students at the meeting, but they walk out without speaking.

In “Alcatraz” (82), Cecilia’s mother has spent much of her life attempting to clear the name of Cecilia’s great-grandfather, Charlie Sullivan, who was pardoned for a murder he did not commit after he spent two years imprisoned at Alcatraz. Cecilia arranges for her mother to meet Nancy Morton, another granddaughter of Charlie’s, and Nancy’s family, including her daughter Sarah. When they were children, Nancy’s parents did not allow her to play with Cecilia’s mother, “a brown girl in a white family” (86). On a tour of Alcatraz, Nancy bonds with Cecilia’s mother and Cecilia with Sarah. After thinking about how much the government owes her family, Cecilia steals a commemorative key from the Alcatraz gift shop and goes to show it to Sarah.

“Why Won’t Women Just Say What They Want” (114) is told in the third person from the point of view of many people who have been abused or otherwise wronged by a famous artist. At first, the victims are surprised when the artist composes apologies to them that seem sincere, but the apologies turn out to be part of an art project. At a gallery, the artist stands at the edge of a fake but smoking volcano and vows to take however long is needed to make amends, giving his victims the option to push him into the volcano. One woman pushes him in and he dies. Another woman, referred to as the “Model/Actress” (115), said previously that she hoped he had fallen into a volcano. At the time she dated him, he did not take her seriously.

In “Anything Could Disappear” (132), Vera finds herself taking care of William, a young boy, after his mother leaves him next to her on a bus to New York and then appears to vanish. Vera is delivering a package of cocaine to a courier service in New York that engages in illegal operations. She ends up working for the courier service, and she begins a romantic relationship with one of the men who runs the business. When one of the service’s messengers is killed in a traffic accident, Vera has second thoughts about keeping William. She finds his father and returns him.

In “The Office of Historical Corrections” (162), Cassie is sent to a small town in Wisconsin for her work at the Institute for Public History, a government agency that specializes in correcting historical facts. She is investigating an incident involving Josiah Wynslow, a Black man believed to have died when a mob of white people burned down his shop. The incident was originally investigated by Genevieve, a woman who previously worked for the institute and had a reputation for correcting not only errors but omissions. Cassie has known Genevieve since fourth grade and thinks of her as her “nemesis” (177). In naming the people who formed the mob, Genevieve prompted one of the townspeople to investigate further and find that Josiah did not die in the fire but escaped to Chicago. Genevieve is still looking into the matter independently, and she and Cassie work together despite the tension between them. They find that Josiah’s sister Minerva was passing as a white woman under the name Ella Mae Schmidt. Her descendants still live in the area, and one of them is a white supremacist with an online presence who goes by the name White Justice. When Genevieve attempts to speak to White Justice about his family history, he shoots her on video, possibly killing her.