A DRY HEAT

Williams, a short-story writer, poet, and medical doctor, relates the lives of boys and men in this posthumously published short-story collection.

This compilation includes works previously published in various literary magazines (including the Blue Mesa Review) and journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association. It’s split into three sections that appear to represent male youth, adolescence, and adulthood, respectively. They feature 12 emotionally resonant tales of male bonding, adventure, and interpersonal melodrama, primarily narrated in the first person. The moving, 1960s-set “Rounding the Bases” follows two young best friends, a boy and girl who manage to endure a searing tragedy through their mutual love of baseball and, in delicate gestures of friendship, each other. Also in the opening section is the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize–winning story “Who We Were at Twelve,” which demonstrates Williams’ deft ability to channel the minds and hearts of an adolescent and a neighborhood bully, complete with all the trepidation, silliness, and recklessness one expects. The author was an anesthesiologist, which enriches the volume’s center portion in pieces such as “Section,” about a physician learning that his child might be born with a disability. Others with medical themes include “Playing Doctor” and the Pushcart Prize–nominated “What the Doctor Didn’t Know,” both focused on clinical professionals with critical choices to make. The third section features a broken husband in “Comp” who, despite a deflated marriage, still admits that he loves his wife, Annie—even as he weighs the possibilities of infidelity. Grief effectively permeates the sorrowful “Three Strides to Thirty,” set at a dog-racing track where the narrator remembers taking his beloved, now-deceased wife. Closing the collection is “Rainbow Trout,” an allegorical tale of a fisherman and a sage fish with advice to dispense, which was Williams’s first attempt at writing fiction, inspired by his father’s death. Overall, the stories are thematically harmonious and feature many arresting moments, and Williams’ storytelling talents will leave readers moved, amused, and reflective, by turns.

Earnest, memorable tales grounded in life’s joys, pains, and challenges.