Line of Fall

Fourteen stories, many of which are set in the American West, trace the paths of ordinary people as they make their way in the world

Winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, this debut collection of 14 stories takes as subjects the alienated creative writing professors, loggers, foresters and others who haunt the rural American outbackquotes unnec.? you're right west of the 100th meridian. In "Fire Season," the finest and fullest, a senior forest service official recalls the catastrophic blaze that massacred the first fire line crew he ever worked with. Wrestling with that memory of "acts in the mortal world" after 30 years, he tries and fails to fathom the "inexplicable." "Toliver" offers a convincing inside view of politics and personnel in the Oregon big-timber logging scene, although this story and ok? others seem too driven by a juvenile fascination with sensitively executed sabotage. On the other hand, the buoyant and enjoyable "On Tour with Max" is more like popular journalism: an untenured professor chaperones an alcoholic "lion" of American poetry on an NEA-sponsored reading tour. Ex-logger Wilson, now an English faculty member at Southwest Texas State University, proves a handy and arresting operator with first-person narrative and brings rich description to an austere, muffled environment.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This collection of 14 stories is the 1989 winner of the University of Iowa's John Simmons Short Fiction Award. These are stories about damaged men making an attempt, usually ineffectual, to alter their lives. Some of the stories, insistently rugged, are set in Montana, Oregon, and Colorado, and the landscape occasionally dwarfs the characters. In "Fire Season" a veteran forest ranger recalls his first season fighting an overwhelming forest fire. Wilson invests this story with the gritty authenticity of a fire camp, describing men pushed beyond endurance, and two particular men who are killed. "On Tour With Max" is a satiric send-up of a has-been poet on a college reading circuit. "Everything" is about a man who uses his passion for collecting as a substitute for life. His wife leaves, and attempting to console him, his neighbor says, "Sometimes life just throws you a screwball," a statement that aptly applies to every character in this collection.
- Marcia Tager, Tenafly,
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.