In honor of this wonderful month-long celebration, the University of Missouri Press is proud to introduce Short Story Fridays: every Friday, all May long, we will be posting lists of some of our favorite short story collections from here at UMP.
So kick back, take a little time (really, you only need a little - they are short stories, after all) and indulge in some great reading.
by Bill Tammeus & Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn
This book tells the stories of Polish Holocaust survivors and their rescuers. The authors traveled extensively in the United States and Poland to interview some of the few remaining participants before their generation is gone. Tammeus and Cukierkorn unfold many stories that have never before been made public: gripping narratives of Jews who survived against all odds and courageous non-Jews who risked their own lives to provide shelter.
Through some twenty stories like these, Tammeus and Cukierkorn show that even in an atmosphere of unimaginable malevolence, individuals can decide to act in civilized ways. Some rescuers had antisemitic feelings but acted because they knew and liked individual Jews. In many cases, the rescuers were simply helping friends or business associates. The accounts include the perspectives of men and women, city and rural residents, clergy and laypersons—even children who witnessed their parents’ efforts.
by Darrell Spencer
From Las Vegas casinos to the boomtowns of Utah and Nevada, these stories tell about lust, about living together, about the perils of everyday life. A convenience store clerk confronts a deranged customer and a far more frightening girlfriend in "Let Me Tell You What Ward DiPino Tells Me at Work." In the fast-paced, powerful "Union Business," union boss Dick Handy teaches his son what women really want, and a son learns a profound lesson on his own: even fathers lie.
In Our Secret's Out, Darrell Spencer will introduce you to a marvelous assortment of quirky characters as they face threats to their safety or sanity and endure life's outrageous surprises.
by G.W. Hawkes
A ditch-digger and his supervisor transcend their ethnic differences and make their way to the edge of a friendship in. A husband lusts after the surrogate mother who will bear his child. A divorced couple finds a rare moment of communion. Besieged by fear, racism, lust, and even UFOs, the characters in G.W. Hawkes's collection struggle—with varying amounts of success—to interpret such apocalyptic signs: electric waterfalls, green lights in the early morning sky, or the throaty melody of a saxophone on a sleepless night.
In powerfully evocative settings that range from the American Southwest to the islands of the South Pacific, Hawkes displays an unerring eye for detail as he maps the intricate geometry of the human heart.
by Stephanie Allen
A Place between Stations explores the lives of African American characters against the ever-present backdrop of race, but with the myriad complexities of individual minds and souls in the foreground.
Two
college students, bound by an intense but uneasy friendship, take an
increasingly dangerous road trip through Florida. A widow faces her
doubts about her long-dead husband by reliving an odd series of train
rides she took along the Hudson River shoreline in the 1950s. An angry,
fatherless girl roams a city at night, searching for an escape from the
ambiguities of childhood. George Mattie, loner and reluctant guide,
leads a misfit nineteenth-century circus caravan on an ill-fated journey
through the northern Connecticut woods. In her stories,
Stephanie Allen enlarges contemporary notions of what African American
lives can be. Varied, to the point, and beautifully composed, this
collection will appeal to all audiences.
by Heather Ross Miller
Situated in small-town North Carolina, Miller's tales, cautionary in
tone, usually depict blue-collar family life and yet almost resemble old
fairy tales. Her stories center around southern families and the
dynamics, both loving and hostile, that move families together, separate
them, threaten them, and then finally protect them.
All of the stories manifest a genuine love for southern families and the
people who are caught, confused, and eventually encouraged and
sustained within them. As Thomas Hardy once observed, "Our personal
griefs and triumphs are often absurd to other people." But rather than
making fun of her characters, Heather Ross Miller is sympathizing as
deeply as she can imagine: "These things are only manageable with a bit
of humor, even with a caustic flavor. So, as in the funny papers, things
can work out, with humor, with plain sense, and, if we are lucky, a bit
of magic."
by Gordon Weaver
In Long Odds, Gordon Weaver's latest collection, each male
protagonist struggles for moral and emotional strength to cope with a
universe gone awry. Each of the eleven stories centers around a
circumstance that is both ordinary and shockingly unpredictable.
Lauded by Publishers Weekly as presenting "characters whose cries
are so human, raw and mordant, the reader forgets the fiction and is
delivered inside the experience," Weaver skillfully introduces a level
of depth and intensity to situations that may appear commonplace at
first glance. This inventive collection offers a gallery of men who,
outwardly ordinary, are revealed as complex in their humanity, defined
as much by their sensibilities as by their actions—or their failures to
act.
by Scott Ely
Loners of one sort or another populate Ely's fiction, from a
young man discharged from the marines and working as a solitary
gamekeeper to a Vietnam veteran turned professor who exchanges favorable
grades for sexual favors from his students. Whatever their situations,
these characters all feel a deep sense of loss and alienation from the
world around them.
Ely's penetrating perceptions about the desire to find security as well as the rhythms of his prose, his vivid detail, and the fullness of his characters make The Angel of the Garden a compelling collection of short fiction.
Brier Country: Stories from Blue Valley
by Elaine Fowler Palencia
Elaine Fowler Palencia returns to Blue Valley, the fictional locale in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Kentucky that is the focus of her highly acclaimed Small Caucasian Woman. Blue Valley is a small community—a town where little goes on "except what is left out of history books"—and most of its residents are "brierhoppers," as folks from Appalachia are sometimes known north of the Ohio River. Palencia continues to map her uniquely poignant territory in these sixteen new stories.
Praised by James McConkey as "unique and yet part of an American tradition that includes . . . the fiction of Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, and reaches back to Mark Twain," Palencia is known for her trademark wit, ear for dialogue, and sense of place—all of which make Brier Country a welcome addition to the folklore of Blue Valley.
Be sure to check back next week for our last Short Story Friday!
Ely's penetrating perceptions about the desire to find security as well as the rhythms of his prose, his vivid detail, and the fullness of his characters make The Angel of the Garden a compelling collection of short fiction.
by Elaine Fowler Palencia
Elaine Fowler Palencia returns to Blue Valley, the fictional locale in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Kentucky that is the focus of her highly acclaimed Small Caucasian Woman. Blue Valley is a small community—a town where little goes on "except what is left out of history books"—and most of its residents are "brierhoppers," as folks from Appalachia are sometimes known north of the Ohio River. Palencia continues to map her uniquely poignant territory in these sixteen new stories.
Praised by James McConkey as "unique and yet part of an American tradition that includes . . . the fiction of Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, and reaches back to Mark Twain," Palencia is known for her trademark wit, ear for dialogue, and sense of place—all of which make Brier Country a welcome addition to the folklore of Blue Valley.
Be sure to check back next week for our last Short Story Friday!
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