Last Call: Stories (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction) - Hardcover

K. L. Cook

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803215401 ISBN 13: 9780803215405

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2004

Synopsis

K. L. Cook’s debut collection of linked stories spans three generations in the life of one West Texas family. Events both tender and tragic lead to a strange and lovely vision of a world stitched together in tenuous ways as the characters struggle to make sense of their lives amid the shifting boundaries of marriage, family, class, and culture.

A series of unusual incidents—a daughter’s elopement, a sobering holiday trip, a vicious attack by the family dog, a lightning strike—provokes a mother of five to abandon her children. An oil rigger, inspired by sun-induced hallucinations, rescues his estranged wife, who doesn’t appreciate his chivalry. In the wake of his father’s and brother’s deaths, a teenage boy finds a precarious solace working with his mother at a country-western bar. A cosmetics salesman schemes to buy Costa Rica and flirts dangerously with mobsters in Las Vegas. A woman fleeing her fourth marriage arrives at a complicated understanding of love and responsibility.

Railroad worker and conman, grieving son and battered wife—these characters explore the limits of family fragility and resilience. Their stories—suggesting unlikely connections between comedy and pathos, cruelty and generosity—promise a hard-won dignity and hope.

About this title

About the Author

K. L. Cook is the author of two other award-winning books of fiction, The Girl from Charnelle and Love Songs for the Quarantined. He teaches creative writing and literature at Prescott College and teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Spalding University.

From the Inside Flap

"The stories in Last Call are about fractured families, lovers and losers (often one and the same), and coming of age the hard way. Cook writes with ease and naturalness and a wonderful, sorrowful knowledge of human foibles." Jean Thompson, author of Who Do You Love and City Boy.

"The stories in Last Call are so entertaining it seems almost unfair that they also resonate powerfully long after you ve put down the book. K. L. Cook has whopping gifts, and this is a splendid book." Robert Boswell, author of Century s Son.

"K. L. Cook starts with the pungent inventory of country western songs but lights it all, even his honky-tonks, fried food, downed trees, sick dogs, and rain, with a new understanding of men and women. These are rich stories by an exciting new voice." Ron Carlson, author of A Kind of Flying.

K. L. Cook s debut collection of linked stories spans three generations in the life of one West Texas family. Events both tender and tragic lead to a strange and lovely vision of a world stitched together in tenuous ways as the characters struggle to make sense of their lives amid the shifting boundaries of marriage, family, class, and culture.

A series of unusual incidents a daughter s elopement, a sobering holiday trip, a vicious attack by the family dog, a lightning strike provokes a mother of five to abandon her children. An oil rigger, inspired by sun-induced hallucinations, rescues his estranged wife, who doesn t appreciate his chivalry. In the wake of his father s and brother s deaths, a teenage boy finds a precarious solace working with his mother at a country-western bar. A cosmetics salesman schemes to buy Costa Rica and flirts dangerously with mobsters in Las Vegas. A woman fleeing her fourth marriage arrives at a complicated understanding of love and responsibility.

Railroad worker and conman, grieving son and battered wife these characters explore the limits of family fragility and resilience. Their stories suggesting unlikely connections between comedy and pathos, cruelty and generosity promise a hard-won dignity and hope.

K. L. Cook s award-winning stories have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines, including American Short Fiction, Threepenny Review, and Harvard Review. Cook teaches creative writing and literature at Prescott College in Arizona

Reviews

They're like something out of a country-and-western song, these Tates of West Texas, what with their good women and bad dogs, bad luck and good honky-tonks. But that's where the song lyric cliche comparison ends. In Cook's hands, the series of linked stories introducing us to three generations of Tates fairly thrums with keen insight borne of uncommon wisdom and unwavering compassion for his characters. From the newly eloped oldest sister to the youngest son still in his crib, we meet nearly everyone we need to know in the first of four sections, and the signature events both subtly and powerfully foreshadow what will be revealed in subsequent tales. As each of the Tates takes his or her turn in the spotlight, we come to know a family shaken by violence, overcome by sorrow, and, most of all, driven by a palpable longing for something or someone always just out of reach. Cook's debut collection is a breathtakingly haunting and magical tapestry of human emotions. Carol Haggas
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803215401
• ISBN 13: 9780803215405
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 253