A Little Catch: Writing the Short Story Including Nine Original Stories

A Little Catch begins with a short instructional section on the art of writing the short story, then includes nine original stories by the author. Mike, the main character in "A Little Catch" is a teenage boy focused on perfecting his skills in baseball. Living above a railroad depot with his family, Mike befriends a traveling hobo who encourages him in his drive for baseball excellence. In "The Long Slide" Don battles demons in his own family with a midnight trip back to his hometown. There, he revisits the site of many of his middle school and high school escapades, the long fire escape slide that falls from the building's third floor to the ground at the rear of the school. A failed, garrulous gold miner leads a boy and his father on an attempted lifesaving mission through a heavy blizzard in "Ol' Ben" Fighting for their lives, the boy and two men struggle against a storm that was to become known as the "Blizzard of '14" These and five other stories, plus a true-life scene, make up the collection, tales mostly of middle Americans facing small issues of "quiet desperation"

Saylor Smith spent most of his working career as a high school English teacher and publications adviser in Southern California and Oregon from the late 1960s until the spring of 2002. He has published four other books, including one with his daughter Evynne. He lives in Eugene, Oregon with his wife Karen.