Synopses & Reviews
Review
"These stories may be resigned, but they're not dispirited. Byers flirts with a Carveresque bleakness, but he can't hide his optimism, and he doesn't try to. Maybe that's a sign of his youth showing through." Craig Seligman, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Seattle and other former frontier towns of the Northwest provide perfect settings for these haunting stories about isolation and possibility." Elizabeth Bukowski, The Wall Street Journal
Review
"The sensitivity to simple human drama is acute in all of these stories, and rather than being ruined by a certain sameness, they offer steady reassurance that quiet determination can make a difference." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
This dazzling debut collection from a Seattle native features stories evocatively set along the Northwest coast, stories of quiet but astonishing lives. Here are ferry workers, carpenters, park rangers, living alongside crab factories, cranberry bogs, the misty ocean. Here are people puzzled by the processes of growing up, leaving home, parenting, aging. Here are people who realize there are second chances, that from illness can come hope, that from family can come a greater sense of self. Psychologically complex and glowing with warmth, these rich stories recall Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver. A MARINER PAPERBACK ORIGINAL.
Synopsis
Michael Byerss award-winning collection The Coast of Good Intentions tells graceful tales of achingly unresolved lives on the Pacific Northwest coast. Byers captures the lives of ferry workers, carpenters, park rangers, and adolescents leaving home, against a backdrop of crab factories, cranberry bogs, the fog-shrouded shore, and the Seattle skyline. A poignant debut collection, these stories are richly peopled with compelling characters whose wisdom and experiences span the generations” (San Jose Mercury News).
About the Author
Micheal Byers received his MFA from the University of Michigan and was a Stegner fellow at Stanford University. His story collection, The Coast of Good Intentions, won the Sue Kaufman Prize for first fiction from the Academy of American Arts and Letters. Byers also won a Whiting Foundation Writer"s Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Prize. His stories have been selected for both The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Awards. The New York Times called his stories "wonderful . . . shot through with the unexpected beauty of the ordinary."
Table of Contents
Settled on the Cranberry coast -- Shipmates down under -- In Spain, one thousand and three -- A fair trade -- Blue river, blue sun -- Wizard -- In the kingdom of Prester John -- Dirigibles.