Dying Light: And Other Stories

The common theme that runs through this new collection of short stories from Donald Hayes, is people at moments of crisis in their lives. They run from the title story, where the main character has come to see himself as a failure as a painter and as a husband, and attempts to come to terms with himself by moving in with his dying father, a tough, sometimes brutally honest man, to the comic story Private Dance, where a high school football coach, who never understands what is happening to him, loses his wife and his job, punches a policeman, and gets arrested in a sleazy strip club in the course of a day and two raucous nights. Each story touches upon what it is to be human and the choices and decisions that we all must face again and again.

"A University of Arkansas writing teacher, Hays submits his first collection more than 15 years after his novel The Hangman's Children and offers exemplars of the genre, with tight plotting, deep idiosyncrasies, strong dialogue and everyday difficult situations. The characters and settings are mostly and winningly Southern. The results, however, feel a bit airless. In the first-person 'Private Dance,' a white high school coach's wife leaves him for the black coach in the next town; the cuckold's contradictory disquisitions and erratic behavior drive the story forward, but the drawn gun, punched-out cop and strip-club blow job feel preordained from the moment Coach Raymond gets into his truck. 'Material' features a writing teacher who hasn't published in 12 years, and who is having an affair with a student. The story begins as the student's jilted ex crashes through the window while teacher and student are in flagrante; as the cops take the ex away, the teacher 'had never been more aroused.' A mental institution escape by an older white man and younger black woman, a Russian orphan scam and stepparenting gone very wrong round things out. (July 15)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

The common theme in this new collection of short stories is people at moments of crisis in their lives. Each story touches upon what it is to be human and the choices and decisions that people all must face again and again.