Spell Heaven
and Other Stories
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
After moving to a coastal town a gay couple is drawn to a group of outsiders living on the edge of the sea
In Spell Heaven, a linked story collection, a lesbian couple moves to a coast town and unexpectedly finds a sense of belonging with a group of outsiders.
Stories include the tale of an undocumented boy's drowning when a wave pulls him out to sea, an ex–FBI agent’s surveillance of a man who leaves chocolate bars at a tree in a weekly ritual, a mother on meth who teaches a lesson on mercy, and Kite Man, who flies kites from a fishing pole and sells drugs on the side. His motto: When the kites fly, you can buy.
The narrator of these stories, raised in a working-class Croatian American fishing family and immigrant community, chooses an early career in labor-oriented jobs. Years later, she finds herself in an academic position in a white-collar world “where the clothes are clean but the politics are dirty.” She questions her own stereotypes about her neighbors and gradually begins to question her life path. Spell Heaven celebrates those who are looking for a human connection in an increasingly isolated world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet and essayist Mirosevich (Pink Harvest, an essay collection) makes her fiction debut with a stilted story collection. Many entries are narrated by an unnamed university professor who has recently relocated to a Northern California beach town with her wife, Stevie. Though the narrator's father was a fisherman, she worries in "The Devil Wind" that she'll be seen as an outsider because of her white-collar status and her queerness. Here and elsewhere, Mirosevich's prose can be repetitive, indulging in multiple turns of phrase where one might be more effective ("Each wave rhymes with the next, there's no off note, no tuneless voice"). In "Our Lady at the Derby," the narrator and Stevie stay at a Motel 6 for a New Year's Eve getaway, and a man knocks on their door, demanding to be let in. The narrator assumes he's "hopped up on something," only to have all of her assumptions reversed by the morning. Throughout, the narrator finds that the people she's inclined to avoid are not who she thought they were, as in "Murderer's Bread," in which Stevie's dogged friendliness in the aftermath of a violent crime shift the narrator's understanding of her neighbors for the better. It's a lesson that would resonate more if the formula weren't so frequently repeated. This is an easy one to pass on.
