In the Light and Dark

In the Light and Dark by Gary Fincke varies across the suggested wide spectrum of experience. Opening with a coming-of-age encounter about sickness and death then moving, in quick succession, through initiation stories with narrators encountering broken marriages, sexual awakening, prejudice, and political uncertainty, these stories feature characters who understand, through witness, how being human not only brings occasional happiness and success, but also often includes uncertainty, loss, and dissatisfaction.

This collection of flash fictions is a lesson in how to use the full spectrum of point-of-view—first, second, and third person; male and female, child and adult and aged; in retrospect and in the immediacy of the present. Two of the stories are full-length, but constructed from two dozen additional flash stories. Regardless, all of them feel witnessed because of the precise, observed, significant detail.