Plainspoken, sharply observed collection from O. Henry Award-winner
Averill (The Slow Air of Ewan Macpherson, 2003, etc.), first in a
new series focused on the nation's heartland. A dozen stories
explore the unexpected moments, surprises, shocks and setbacks of
daily life in Kansas, a place where "late summer has its own rhythm
of days, as dawn moves more slowly into the sky, as corn swells and
stiffens in the fields." The author writes of couples like Harry
and Mavis, who while expecting their first child observe a naked
man running with a herd of deer that visits their land some
mornings. The sense of wonder this creates eases Harry's
transformation to fatherhood in some mysterious way. "Topeka
Underground" is a midcentury fable about the artist's place in a
conforming society. A white-bearded man and his tiny wife live in
the basement of an unfinished house in a new suburban development.
Despite his father's warnings to stay away, a young boy who lives
nearby is drawn to the older couple by their unkempt lawn and
eccentric habits. Once he discovers the treasures they've created,
he realizes how extraordinary they are. "The Onion and I," another
father-son tale, compares the earthiness of growing onions to the
aridity of cyberspace. Some of these pieces are brief: "A Story as
Preface: Running Blind" takes only a page to show a runner teaching
a blind friend, who soon outstrips him; and "The Summer Grandma Was
Supposed to Die" is almost as spare, although this account of a
young boy being bitten by a rattlesnake is marred by an unnecessary
last sentence. The most fully realized story, "During the Twelfth
Summer of Elmer D. Peterson," takes up many of Averill's
characteristic elements-a solitary young boy, a rule-setting
father, a grandfatherly figure who fosters rebellion, and a
powerful natural setting-and polishes them to a fine point. At its
best, this creates a landscape at once realistic and fantastic,
inhabited by characters whose eccentricities make them fully human.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Falling under the spell of these short stories by O. Henry
Award-winning author Thomas Fox Averill, a reader might well
wonder: What in the world is ordinary? If there really are "just
plain folks" anywhere at all, they'd surely be in the solid
Midwestern Kansas of Averill's fiction. And yet the "ordinary"
people we meet in these stories lead us into one startling
encounter after another with the mystery, the magic, and, yes, the
transcendence that even the most mundane life secretly holds. In
writing that has been called "lyrical" ("New York Times"),
"compelling" ("Kansas City Star"), and "voluptuous" ("Booklist"),
Averill explores the relationship between fathers and sons, the
dead and the living, the natural and the unnatural. With
crystalline clarity he reveals the ordinary and the extraordinary
genius of a place, a time, a solitary soul embedded in the minutiae
of the everyday: a young boy hunting for a runaway horse; a couple
ostracized in their small town; a grieving high school basketball
star; a child with a voice purer than a tuning fork; a gay son
seeking his father's acceptance; two boys playing bocce with the
parish priest for high stakes--the secret of their birth. If there
is magic in love, in acceptance, in sorrow and solace in all the
usual places, then these stories find that magic with ordinary
genius.
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