I've always enjoyed vignettes
because they give the reader the sense of having found the fragment of a novel
to be filled in.
Thank You for the Light by F. Scott
Fitzgerald is just such a vignette.
It's only a few pages, belatedly discovered by Fitzgerald's
grandchildren among his effects and published by the New Yorker in 2012
although the same magazine rejected it many decades ago.
It's about Mrs. Hanson,
a 1930s traveling saleswoman addicted to nicotine who goes to a Catholic church
hoping to light her cigarette from a votive candle. In so doing, she has an encounter with
the Blessed Mother.
One realizes that the end of the
vignette is just the beginning of a very long journey for Mrs. Hanson. In fact, although superficially very
different, the piece reminds me of the transforming experience for Sarah Miles in the Deborah Kerr movie version of
Graham Greene's novel The End of the Affair.
The vignette is available at the New Yorker online
UPDATE - 9-3-2026 - I just checked to make sure the link was good and discovered that yes it is but there is now a paywall. I did find it here without a paywall. Hopefully that post accurately quotes the original. Unfortunately the vignette is not in the public domain due to the delay in publication based on the original rejection.
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