Bright Winter by Anna Keesey

This is an interesting short story as it is simply a one sided story told from a father. A father is writing his wayward son who has joined the Millerites. This story was born on someone suggesting that the author write a story about the people who sat in the fields waiting for God to take them to heaven. The author notes that "This person was speaking about the followers of William Miller, who believed Miller had deciphered from the Bible the precise date of Christ's return to earth." She goes on to say that a year later the Branch Davidian compound burned.
Both of these events contributed to this wonderful story. As the father writes letters unheeded to his wayward son the story unfolds and we are able to see beyond the quill and ink of the letters he wrote as well as feel the sorrow and shame caused by his son. This is another great story that reminds me of another 'one sided narrative' short story but I've read so many that I'll have to think about it and post later which story it reminds me of.

Sleep by Stephen Dixon

This story is told from the voice of an old man who has lost his wife of many years. This story is both sad and satirical. The voice comes powerfully from the start of the story:
"Several people wanted to see him to his car after the burial but he said, 'No, I'd like to walk to it by myself, I don't know why. Do you mind? And everyone has a ride back? Good. Then thanks for coming, and I guess I'll be seeing you.' He was thinking of sleep even then, during the short walk. How in maybe an hour, or two to three, he'll be in bed, under or on top of the covers, phone off the hook or in some way disconnected, curtains closed. Moments after she died, or maybe a minute after, but anyway, almost the first thing he thought once he realized she was dead was 'Now I can sleep better.' Or was it 'Now I can get some sleep'?"

Bright Winter by Anna Keesey

This is an interesting short story as it is simply a one sided story told from a father. A father is writing his wayward son who has joined the Millerites. This story was born on someone suggesting that the author write a story about the people who sat in the fields waiting for God to take them to heaven. The author notes that "This person was speaking about the followers of William Miller, who believed Miller had deciphered from the Bible the precise date of Christ's return to earth." She goes on to say that a year later the Branch Davidian compound burned.

Both of these events contributed to this wonderful story. As the father writes letters unheeded to his wayward son the story unfolds and we are able to see beyond the quill and ink of the letters he wrote as well as feel the sorrow and shame caused by his son. This is another great story that reminds me of another 'one sided narrative' short story but I've read so many that I'll have to think about it and post later which story it reminds me of.

Intertextuality by Mary Gordon

"My family liked stories that were funny. If a story wasn't funny, there didn't seem to them much point in telling it..." This story is about how we find out who we are from our ancestors.

"Twelve years after my grandmother's arrival in New York, having unshackled herself from work as a domestic by making herself a master seamstress, having married a Sicilian against everyone's advice, having borne a child by him and become pregnant with another, my grandmother paid for her mother, four sisters, and two brothers to come across to New York.

When the ship docked my grandmother was in labor, so she couldn't meet it. This meant she couldn't vouch for the new immigrants. So she sent her sister-in-law, whose name was identical to hers. My grandmother was a strapping woman, nearly six feet, with large, fair figures. My Sicilian great-aunt was a small dark beauty of five foot two with the hands and feet of a doll. When my great-grandmother saw my great-aunt pretending to be my grandmother, she refused, the story goes, to set foot off the ship. 'If that's what happens to you in America, I'm not putting a foot near the place,' she said.

Stories like this one add to the ability of the writer to capture the attention but also make the reader happy and laugh.

Fitting Ends by Dan Chaon

A superbly written story about stories. The narrator is telling about someone else writing a story, but in turn is telling a story. "The writer spends much of the first few paragraphs setting the scene, trying to make it sound spooky."

"But anyway, this is how the writer sets things up. Then he begins to tell about some of the train engineers, how they dreaded passing through this particular stretch. . .There were a few bad accidents at the crossing --- a carload of drunken teenagers who tried to beat the train, an old guy who had a heart attack as his pickup bumped across the tracks. That sort of thing. Actually, this happens anywhere that has a railroad crossing.

Then came the sightings. An engineer would see "a figure" walking along the tracks in front of the train. . . The engineer would blow his horn, but the person, "the figure," would seem not to notice. The engineer blasted the horn several more times, more and more insistent." . . .

"You can imagine the ending, of course: that was how my brother died, a few years after these supposed sightings began. His car had run out of gas a few miles from home, and he was walking back. He was drunk. Who knows why he was walking along the tracks? Who knows why he suddenly kneeled down? Maybe he stumbled, or had to throw up. Maybe he did it on purpose. He was killed instantly."

Now I don't want to or intend you to simply think "what a dreadful story!" But rather "Wow, I really felt the text pull me along the story!"

I found this worthy to be placed along other great short stories and deserves to be read at least twice.

Driving the Heart by Jason Brown

I just love the tempo of this story. Mr Brown combines narrative with little dialogue to, in great detail, encompass the organ donor's delivery person's job. Not only are some of the little known facts of what the job entails but there are also the deeper, more powerfully moving aspects of the job that the narrator is trying to teach his young trainee.

"We're the only choice they have for reaching a small town in an out-of-the-way place. Cellular phone service is out and in many places the power is out, but most of the regular pay phones still work. We stop every hour at designated places and call the hospital to make sure the patient in Lebanon is still alive . . . This heart, however, is getting old . . . Hearts are packed in ice. But even a frozen heart will last for only twenty-four hours on the outside, unofficially."

The ending to this story is bitter sweet...

Fires by Rick Bass

Fires is a great story about a woman named Glenda who tells everyone in a small mountain town that she is a runner training and will only be there for a few months. The descriptions within this story: from hares turning color from white to brown to snowlines disappearing from a valley unto only the highest mountainous regions. I thought that this story had an agenda, but it wasn't until I read the author's notes did it all make sense. Fires is about a character with an internal illness but it is not mentioned in the story. A well written piece.