A Cast of Characters and Other Stories - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1596921935 ISBN 13: 9781596921931

Publisher: MacAdam Cage, 2006

Rick Bragg. Tim Gautreaux. William Gay. Fannie Flagg. Diane McWhorter. Charles Simic. Daniel Wallace. Steve Yarbrough. These are just a handful of the acclaimed writers whose work has appeared in the Stories from the Blue Moon Café series since its 2002 inception.

Now, in Cast of Characters and Other Stories, the fifth installment of the series, Sonny Brewer has selected a new crop of fiction promising to satisfy even the most discerning of tastes. This dynamic collection of fourteen short stories is a must-read, offering the best in contemporary Southern writing and a glimpse into the future of Southern literature.

About the Author:

Sonny Brewer owns Over the Transom Bookstore in Fairhope, Alabama, and serves as board chairman of the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts. He is the author of the novel The Poet of Tolstoy Park and the upcoming A Sound Like Thunder.

From Publishers Weekly:

Though the fifth installment of the Stories from the Blue Moon Café series is pocket-sized, there is nothing cute about the collection. Editor Brewer gathered 14 stories, essays and poems from a mostly male group of Southern writers, and the result is taut and unflinching. Howard Bahr's tense "Coppers: 1939" hovers between life and death: a dog chews on a man's entrails while he waits to die, pinned between two boxcars. In "A Man" by Pia Z. Ehrhardt, a 25-year-old girl is moved by the angry tears of her rapist. He responds to her forgiveness by fetching an ax to cut off her hand. Other stories are less bloody and bleak, but equally affecting. Frank Turner Hollon runs the New York City Marathon and tests his mental and physical endurance. Chip Livingston's essay about being contacted by a boy whose background and name are identical to the hero of a poem he wrote highlights the power of technology and its ability to connect writers to their most receptive and important audiences. The title story, by Rick Bragg, is about a 45-year-old man who endlessly hunts an elusive fish until he must admit that even catching it cannot change his fishing legacy: "I would just be the bad fisherman who got lucky, once." Each piece offers a unique version of the Southern past and a tantalizing glimpse into the future of Southern literature.
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• Publisher: MacAdam Cage
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1596921935
• ISBN 13: 9781596921931
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 290
• Editor: Brewer Sonny