Dry Rain - Softcover

Fromm, Pete

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558217355 ISBN 13: 9781558217355

Publisher: Lyons Pr, 1998

Synopsis

A memorable collection of stories about family, love, fealty, commitment, and heroism, all set against the backdrop of the everyday people of the American West, ""Dry Rain" is a work of art" ("Men's Journal").

About this title

From the Back Cover

In this memorable collection of short stories, Pete Fromm reconfirms his reputation as one of the West's most intriguing and talented young writers.Dry Rain, winner of a 1998 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, looks at ordinary people in extraordinary situations: the good son who dutifully entertains his visiting parents, all the while at pains to obscure that his wife has just left him; a family outing that turns to terror as a child disappears into a cornfield; the everyday cruelty of two young men determined to find evil in a brotherly Hutterite community; a husband and wife at a tense crossroads in their lives, confronted by an eerie neighbor with a passion for snake hunting.These are stories about family, love, fealty, commitment, and heroism, all against the backdrop of the everyday people of the American West. Fromm's singular accomplishment in this collection is to make these "ordinary" human beings seem so much more than that - and, by extension, to deepen our own "ordinary" lives. (6 X 9, 224 pages)

From Kirkus Reviews

Third--and best--volume of western stories from Fromm (The Tall Uncut, 1992). These 17 tales prove Fromm to be an accomplished storyteller; many begin with incidents involving odd behavior, and conclude by deftly revealing the believable origins of the behavior. There are several outstanding tales here, including ``Dutch Elm,'' in which frantic parents search a cornfield at dusk for their young son, who has wandered away. The incident proves to be an uncomfortable reminder to the father of mortality and chance. In ``Lifesaving,'' a man acclaimed as a hero discovers that he may not really be one. The title story follows the adventures of a not-so-bright father and his genius son aimlessly driving the backroads of the Canadian borderlands. The term ``dry rain'' refers to precipitation that doesn't quite reach the earth, and stands here for the seemingly great gap between the father and son. ``Hoot'' describes the quiet anguish of young Drew, who has lived alone on his hardscrabble farm since his mother died and his brother Carlton ran away, and is haunted by a Hutterite woman (a ``Hoot''), whom he can never have. When Carlton returns, with a wife and two children in tow, and announces that they are moving in, Drew (stunted emotionally by his harsh life) runs off rather than surrender his loneliness. In the quite moving ``The Topic of Cancer,'' a Wyoming widower takes his little son back to his family home in Ocean Beach, New Jersey, and is stunned to discover how desperately his son wants to keep his mother's memory alive. Here, characters waver and struggle and sometimes win through to a stronger understanding of their actions and needs. Altogether, Fromm's latest offers a strong and distinctive vision of contemporary life in the isolated corners of the modern West. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lyons Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1558217355
• ISBN 13: 9781558217355
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224