The Old and the Lost

“Blake is an eloquent singer of Gulf Coast storms and tides, both meteorological and human. These collected stories are a true delight.” —John Barth

“I was born in a land of bayous, raised between rivers,” Glenn Blake writes. “There is a place in Southeast Texas where two rivers meet and become one. There is a long bridge over these waters, and as you drive across, you can look to the south and see where the Old River and the Lost River become the Old and the Lost. You can look out as far as you can see and watch this wide water become the bay.”

These fourteen stories are set in the swamps, bayous, and sloughs of Southeast Texas, a region that is subsiding—sinking inches every year. The characters who inhabit Blake’s haunting landscape—awash in their own worlds, adrift in their own lives—struggle to salvage what they can of their hopes and dreams from the encroaching tides.

“When he writes about it, you can feel it, smell it, taste it, hear it, see it, that strange, lost, unknown corner of Texas. It is a whole other country and Blake gives it to you with all its oddity and mystery, as it is.” —Molly Ivins