Toward the Sun

These haunting, inventive, mysterious sports stories (which are about far more than sport) will electrify thinking athletes, and all readers of literary fiction. They are not “sports stories” in the traditional sense, but something more intense, full of painful beauty and strange truth.


TOWARD THE SUN is a collection united by sports of every variety—each a vehicle for exploring the depths of human nature; each a part of some character’s desperate grasp for meaning in the world.


A skiing story is also about the reinvention of the self and the slipperiness of identity. A basketball story shows a timid father's hopelessly frayed bond with his son, and his tenuous connection to life. A golf story is about love and sex and trust. A squash story is about aging and infidelity and secrets. A boxing story becomes a meditation on the purpose of existence. And the title story of the collection is one of the most unforgettable running stories ever written, in which a man runs with an animal nature—and perhaps becomes the animal.


These thirteen stories are ethereal, radiant, and exquisitely written. They can break your heart or lift your soul.

Praise for Kent Nelson


“Working quietly, with very little fanfare, Kent Nelson has written as large and as accomplished a body of short fiction as anyone working today. Nowhere is his talent more evident than in his stories about sport, and so this new collection is most welcome--the exhilarating evidence of a writer at the top of his game.”

—W. D. Wetherell


“Add Nelson’s name to such fictional chroniclers of the rugged West as Thomas McGuane, Richard Ford, and Jim Harrison.” —Booklist, on All Around Me Peaceful


“Like Dan O’Brien and Tom McGuane, Kent Nelson manages to convey grandly what people and places make of each other.” —Kirkus Reviews, on Language in the Blood


“His lean, smooth style lends itself to a thoroughly believable work of fiction about the delicacy and texture of relationships. Nelson treats his characters with thoughtfulness and grace, allowing them to deal with their fears and flaws with unfailing honesty. We come away richer for the experience.” —The Boston Globe, on Language in the Blood


“The beauty of Kent Nelson’s fiction renews my faith in the power of realistic narrative. Tightly bound to the rough edges of the ordinary world, these stories are both lush and precise in their rendering of the things around us. Nelson pays the same close attention to his characters, all of which are deftly and lovingly drawn, and to the great continuing contest of man against himself.”

—Tim O’Brien, on Language in the Blood