Dad was a thin man with a high forehead and a bent nose. He wore a black patch over his left eye and worked as a carpenter at a shop across the railroad tracks. Mama took me there a few times when Dad had forgotten to take his lunch box. The place smelled sweet and […]
Excerpt from “Coventry,” by Joseph Bathanti
Editor’s Note: Italics appear in the original. From Chapter 51 in Coventry One afternoon, Papa and Frank and I were out fetching a convict named Tombs. He’d been gone the better part of three hours before we got started after him. Papa was never in a hurry. It was his theory that a run […]
“What Got You Here Will Not Get You To Your Future,” by John Englehardt
The following is an excerpt from John Englehardt’s novel, Bloomland. The most unflagging woman you will ever meet enters your life during sophomore year of college, the same time you stop believing in God. What this means is the zealotry that has been ingrained in you—the kind that has involved obsessing over sin and faith and […]