Dog Run Moon
Stories
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- 21,99 €
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- 21,99 €
Publisher Description
A construction worker is chased through the night by a shady local businessman whose dog he has stolen; a Wild West re-enactor is engaged in a long-running affair with the Indian 'squaw' who slays him on the battlefield every year; a boy is tasked by his father to rid the farm of cats. Playing out against the rugged backdrop of the untamed West, these stories are populated by characters who are toughened by life but still tender enough to bleed, to cry, to care, and to dream.
With its taut plotting and calloused sensibility, Dog Run Moon is written deep in the American grain, and yet Callan Wink's humour, empathy and layered storytelling creates a fictional world entirely his own. This remarkable debut reminds you just how effortlessly powerful good writing can be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this debut story collection, Wink stakes his bold claim to Big Sky literary territory, the terrain of Thomas McGuane, Norman Maclean, and Jim Harrison. Most of the stories feature men who find themselves in sticky situations, providing surprises for readers. In the title story, a sawmill worker goes on the run with a dog he has taken from a local businessman. A teacher from Montana with a problematic love life vacations in Texas, where he impulsively takes a job working on a ranch ("Exotics"). A college dropout training to be an EMT falls in love with an older woman with two children ("Runoff"). In "One More Last Stand," a Little Bighorn reenactor playing the part of Custer has an affair with a Crow Tribe woman who plays his killer on the battlefield. In "Off the Track," a young man sent to prison for manslaughter inherits his grandfather's house and the memories it contains. And in the longest and best story, "In Hindsight," the author charts the history of a veterinary assistant who, nearing the end of her long life, learns it's never too late to find grace. A fly-fishing guide in Montana, Wink suffuses every page with his love of the land. No matter what their circumstances, he never condescends to his characters, who all suffer from longings that cause them to make decisions they don't quite understand. But through the transparency of his writing, at once delicate and brutally precise, the author gifts us with the wonderful feeling of knowing someone you've only met in a book.
