Dissecting the Short Story: "God Bless" by Barbara Westwood Diehl

Welcome to the new installment of my Dissecting the Short Story series. This week's entry is a timely one, being for a story set around the holiday season. As with all entries in this series, my intention here is to look at a story which was sold to a pro-rate fiction market, generally one of the large digest magazines, and see what we -- as writers -- can learn from it.

I thought this was a fantastic story and one which went in directions I would not have expected before reading it. If you have a copy of this magazine, it might be worth your time to read this one before reading my notes below.

Story:
"God Bless" by Barbara Westwood Diehl
Published in:
January, 2012 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Approximate Length:
2500 words
Presentation:
Third Person, Chronological (Well, pretty much...)
Summary [WARNING: Spoilers Included!]: