Synopses & Reviews
"People break my heart. Every single one of them does." In settings that range from rural fishing communities to the urban capital, the stories of Cabin, Clearing, Forest are a lyrical road map to the human landscape of contemporary Alaska. In "Blue Ticket," a stranger finds solace in a Juneau homeless encampment. Old friends argue over the pleasures and perils of small-town life in "A Beginner’s Guide to Leaving Your Hometown," and in "Every Island Longs for the Continent," a young family falls apart after moving to Kodiak. In these thirteen stories, Zach Falcon explores the burdens of familiarity and the pains of estrangement through characters struggling with their place in the world.
Review
"A young writer with such extraordinary gifts that one is tempted to compare his debut to Hemingway's." Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Breece D'J Pancake cut short a remarkably promising career when he took his own life in 1979 at the age of twenty-six. In 1983 the posthumous publication of this book a collection of stories that depict, with astonishing power and grace, the world of Pancake's native rural West Virginia electrified the literary world with a force that still resounds across two decades.
About the Author
Breece D'J Pancake was born in West Virginia in 1952. He attended Marshall University, taught English at Virginia military schools, and then entered the creative writing program at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he died in 1979. During his lifetime, his short fiction was published primarily in The Atlantic.