Conflicted hearts search for human connection upon waters and vivid landscapes.
Randolf, a Susquehanna ferryman, is piloting an Amish wedding party in the title story of this collection, “Nunc Stans—A Ferry Tale.” But mid-river, the ferry snags on a low dam, and a frightened mare bolts from the deck. As Randolf tries to save the ferry, he’s forced to confront his own remorse in a haunting reflection of a couple’s grief, guilt, and awakenings in the aftermath of a stillbirth.
In “Not 2B,” a down-on-his-luck dirt track driver is in search of redemption for the on-track tragedy that made him the scorn and scapegoat of 800 Saturday night race fans.
“Nancy,” inspired by John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra, is set in the wilds of northern Pennsylvania and tells the crossing paths of a raw Pennsylvania lumbering crew, an influenza-ridden society man, and a female African American goat farmer.
In “The Wagon Woman,” a story of the irony of highways simultaneously feeding and destroying small towns, an EMT arrives at his most tragic medical incident to discover the aftershock of an illicit love affair he is embroiled in.
In “Mainland,” Robin, an ecology student, is doing graduate fieldwork in Maine. On an evening out, a marine biologist named Susan persuades Robin to join her and three men for an impromptu party on a cobblestone beach. Abandoned with a drunk lobsterman and saving herself from a sexual assault, Robin comes to realize the prerogative of her own fertility and identity.
PJ Piccirillo is the author of Heartwood and The Indigo Scarf, a Sunbury Press SUNNY Award winner. He has twice won the Appalachian Writers Association Award for Short Fiction. An advocate of northern Appalachia's under-recognized literature, PJ is the founder of the Writers Conference of Northern Appalachia (WCoNA) and the Northern Appalachia Review, for which he is the current editor-in-chief. Inspired by the timberlands and red brick industrial burgs of Pennsylvania's Allegheny Plateau where his ancestors settled to work woods, farms, tanneries, mines, and rail sections, Piccirillo's stories are as recognized for their sensitivity to their characters' passions as for their depictions of conflicted hearts taking on their demons. PJ is a third-generation community firefighter, an EMT, NASCAR firefighter, winemaker, and Cubmaster. He's been a factory worker, campground owner, marketing manager, technical writer, and cook. He can be found with his wife and three sons pursuing all things outdoors on the creek-fissured plateau of his native northcentral Pennsylvania.
