Small Town Mastodons

Cowboy Jamboree Press
good grit lit.

Small Town Mastodons

Extinct. Antiquated. Unimportant relics of the past. No, not in Small Town Mastodons where the often overlooked and ignored lives of small town Appalachia run and trundle through its pages, brought to clear life for even those who consider them dead. Timothy Dodd’s third collection of short stories offers a cast of characters at odds with the big city dreams, realities, and lies that nevertheless encroach upon them, “somewhere else” always present somehow in life’s equations. But it’s something better they want, not bigger, and from the pair of surreal Raywin Beet stories (“Clues” and “Speck, WV”) to the harsher realism of “Shifting Ground” and “When to Bury,” from the zany “Prelude to Our Breakup” to the atmospheric “Town Planning” and humble lesson-learned of “Jesus Drive,” Dodd’s literary palate is not afraid to extend from the darkest and drabbest colors to the fluorescence of Mountain Dew’s fine flavors. As with his earlier story collections, he picks at the bones and gristle of the outsiders and unwanted, scabs and scars of youth and old-timers alike—characters looking for more than what’s on offer both at home and far away. Small Town Mastodons are stories that breathe the lives of sincere places and predicaments, of a region and people yet to become anyone’s fossils or museum skeletons.


Praise For Previous Work by Timothy Dodd

Orbits 52
Epic in its scope and cinematic in its approach, Timothy Dodd’s Orbits 52 is a must-read for anyone who wishes to come to terms with the material and spiritual conditions of present-day West Virginia. On the surface, Dodd is reporting a road trip down King Coal Highway—his father’s reluctant passenger—to visit his mother committed long ago to a mental health facility, but it is in fact a complete history animated by a voice that is generous, piercing, vulnerable.

–Jacob Strautmann, author of The Land of the Dead
Is Open for Business and New Vrindaban


Fissures, and Other Stories
“...the stories in Fissures are sure to impress readers with their maturity and clear-eyed perceptions of the world as it is today. There is nothing precious here, only the truth about a place that is often maligned or misunderstood. Timothy Dodd gets it, and he gets it right. I look forward to reading much more from him as he makes his mark in contemporary writing about the mountains.”

–Charles Dodd White, author of How Fire Runs
and Sinners of Sanction County


Men in Midnight Bloom
“It’s tempting to write poetically about Timothy Dodd’s Men in Midnight Bloom, about his short stories in general, but what I’m going to say instead is that not one word of this book is anything other than honest. From the pulled down Mountain Dew hats to the dirty linoleum floors, it’s all pitch perfect. I can’t think of a better fiction than that. Pitch-fucking-perfect.”

–Sheldon Lee Compton, author ofThe Orchard Is
Full of Sound and Oblivion Angels