Moody, memorable tales powered by human struggle, tenacity, and an unshakeable sense of survival.
A collection offers short stories that are liberally seasoned with grit and humanity.
Most of the 14 tales in Archuleta’s anthology are grounded in the beauty and intricate complexities of the human condition. Set in the mid-20th-century American West, they feature central characters who exemplify the meaning of struggle but also drive home the sanctity of pure hearts and the goodness of selfless intentions. The most heartfelt stories appear early in the collection. “A Prayer to Saint Michael” stars a kindhearted man who travels to his recently deceased brother’s Texas ranch to shore up his estate. But past and present issues cloud the protagonist’s path, including memories of his involvement in a covert operation. The entries vary wildly in length, which is a testament to Archuleta’s talent to seize readers through an economy of pages or in a more fully realized yarn. At just three pages, one of the shorter tales is a true heartbreaker. “A Very Good Question” involves the closeness of two brothers. One of the siblings, a delusional former sergeant with PTSD, believes he sees “visitations.” Elsewhere, trouble seems to find the author’s characters. The day laborer in “Following the Harvest” keeps a low profile about the crops he tends until police interrupt his trek homeward with trumped-up vagrancy charges. In the atmospheric “Last Game at Kezar,” two former Mafia hit men reunite in San Francisco. The abused yet resilient nightclub dancer in “Imperfections” fights to find a way back to Ciudad Juarez in her Mexican homeland. Several stories are drawn with such engrossing precision that readers will be left wanting more, as in the title tale focusing on John Westley Thornhill, a magnetic, seasoned ranch hand. He decides to quit his job, as his patience with a cowboy’s life has slowly been coming to a bittersweet end. Archuleta avoids easy platitudes and saccharine conclusions and instead allows readers to interpret the embedded meanings in his tales and glean the inherent economic issues and cultural difficulties of the period he sets them in. Without being overly expository or thematically simplistic, the stories present a cast of compelling characters. While the players may not always land on solid ground, they are impeccably drawn, believably passionate, and alive with emotion.
Moody, memorable tales powered by human struggle, tenacity, and an unshakeable sense of survival.Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64228-077-7
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Izzard Ink
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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