Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl The Time the Waters Rose is a collection of eight short stories by the late Paul Ruffin. One of the eight is less a short story and more an excerpt from his 2002 novel, Pompeii Man. The collection opens with a “Preface,” part biography and part apology or defense. Ruffin […]
“To The Disappearance,” by Todd Fuller
August 16, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by MW Rishell If Todd Fuller were a baseball player, he’d make a lot of money. In the terms of the diamond, he can play many positions and can play them all well. Someone like Ben Zobrist comes to mind (for you baseball fans). And he would do something highly experimental and inconceivable, like […]
“Wondering Toward Center,” by Kathy A. Bradley
August 11, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl Back in 1851 Henry Thoreau arrived at the Concord Lyceum to deliver a lecture, one he would repeat ten or more times. He thought of the piece as seminal to everything he might write afterwards. He revised it throughout the next nine or so years, publishing the piece eventually as […]
“The Last Great American Magic,” by L.C. Fiore
August 9, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith The Last Great American Magic, by L.C. Fiore, is a sprawling epic spanning the life of the great Shawnee warrior Tecumseh from childhood in Ohio Country to his death in Upper Canada, roughly 1774-1813. The warrior’s battles take him all over the East, from Tennessee to southern bayous, joining forces with […]
August Read of the Month: “Punch,” by Ray McManus
August 3, 2016 by 2 Comments
Reviewed by William Bernhardt I should have seen it coming. The book opens with an epigraph from Philip Levine that provides fair warning: “You’ve never done something simple, so obvious…because you don’t know what work is.” That quote is a clear indicator of the informative and enlightening pleasures to be found in Ray McManus’s fascinating […]
“All the Governor’s Men,” by Katherine Clark
July 27, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl I title this review “The Overly-Stuffed Novel,” a designation that calls attention to Willa Cather’s credo stated with some punchy forcefulness in her essay “The Novel Demeuble.” The point is simple enough: Aesthetically, the novel does not merely catalog the furniture of life, physical things, processes, sensations, thoughts. She analogizes […]