Synopses & Reviews
In this finely crafted collection, acclaimed writer Elizabeth Cox examines the lives of common people and how they deal with life when uncommon things happen to them how they accept their fate, sometimes choosing to move on, sometimes not. The stories, many set in the South, deal with questions of loyalty, betrayal, discovery, sexuality, death, birth, and the inner dynamics that drive the choices we make. The characters struggle with a complex mixture of kindness and violence, and their final choices reveal a flawed but finally compassionate humanity.
Elizabeth Cox has an extraordinary talent for inhabiting her characters and capturing place, sense, and time. This commanding group of stories will prove unforgettable.
Synopsis
In this powerful collection, award-winning writer Elizabeth Cox demonstrates talent, grace, and quiet command of the written word. These stories, many set in the South, examine the lives of common people and how they deal with life when uncommon things happen to them, how they accept their fate sometimes choosing to move on, sometimes not.
The stories range from dark to funny, sad to joyful, as the characters (some naive, some too all-knowing) examine their own lives and the lives around them. In the O. Henry Award winning story The Third of July, a wife starts her day by planning to leave her husband. As she drives away, she witnesses a fatal car accident, which causes her to reconsider what she is about to do. The Last Fourth Grade tells of a woman who visits her beloved fourth-grade teacher, now in prison, only to discover that her childhood memories are not quite what they seemed. In Saved, twelve-year-old Josie Wire believes she can save those around her, and, on a weekly basis, calls the Wagon Wheel Bar looking for lost souls in need of salvation. There, she encounters an unemployed schoolteacher who wants nothing more than to be saved by the alluring sexuality of a twelve-year-old girl. In the end she saves him from himself. Cox brings us into the hearts and lives of these people, illustrating their humanity with prose that is both remarkable in its subtlety and absolute in its beauty.
About the Author
Elizabeth Cox is the author of three novels, Familiar Ground, The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love, and Night Talk. She is a recipient of the O. Henry Award for short fiction. She teaches writing at Duke and Bennington and makes he home in Littleton, Massachusetts. She has a son and daughter and is married to Mike Curtis, fiction editor at The Atlantic Monthly.