Last Call: Stories (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction)

K. L. Cook

ISBN 10: 0803215401 / ISBN 13: 9780803215405

Published by University of Nebraska Press October 2004, 2004

About this Item

Author signature with inscription on title page.First edition by number code. Dust jacket is protected by mylar.

Seller Inventory # 254481

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Last Call: Stories (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction)
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press October 2004
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803215401
• ISBN 13: 9780803215405
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Collectible-Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Signed: Signed By Author
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fiction Hard Cover

About this title

Synopsis

K. L. Cook’s debut collection of linked stories spans three generations in the life of one West Texas family. Events both tender and tragic lead to a strange and lovely vision of a world stitched together in tenuous ways as the characters struggle to make sense of their lives amid the shifting boundaries of marriage, family, class, and culture.

A series of unusual incidents—a daughter’s elopement, a sobering holiday trip, a vicious attack by the family dog, a lightning strike—provokes a mother of five to abandon her children. An oil rigger, inspired by sun-induced hallucinations, rescues his estranged wife, who doesn’t appreciate his chivalry. In the wake of his father’s and brother’s deaths, a teenage boy finds a precarious solace working with his mother at a country-western bar. A cosmetics salesman schemes to buy Costa Rica and flirts dangerously with mobsters in Las Vegas. A woman fleeing her fourth marriage arrives at a complicated understanding of love and responsibility.

Railroad worker and conman, grieving son and battered wife—these characters explore the limits of family fragility and resilience. Their stories—suggesting unlikely connections between comedy and pathos, cruelty and generosity—promise a hard-won dignity and hope.

About the Author

K. L. Cook is the author of two other award-winning books of fiction, The Girl from Charnelle and Love Songs for the Quarantined. He teaches creative writing and literature at Prescott College and teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Spalding University.