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"Every story shines with mystery and truth. Eric Shade is a writer to watch." Kent Nelson, Author of Cold Wind River |
"Eleven economical, well-told stories . . . [An] homage to the not-so-quiet desperation of working-class anti-heroes. Mr. Shade tells their stories with sharp, profane and lean language. . . Eyesores is stirring and haunting. . ."
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"A tough, unforgiving portrait of shallow small-town folk who have heard only the gossip on nobility." Kirkus Reviews |
“Deservedly the winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.”
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"Taken individually, these stories are brilliantly human and startlingly true to some primal aspect of the postindustrial rustbelt heart." Rain Taxi |
"In his remarkable, Flannery O’Connor Award-winning collection, Shade takes us to Windfall, Pennsylvania, and gets the details exactly right." Booklist (starred review) |
"[An] impressive new collection." Richmond Times-Dispatch |
“Reminiscent of the cast of ‘The Deer Hunter’. . .Shade demonstrates a sure touch.” Houston Chronicle |
“Stories told in clear, colloquial prose. . .has the honest ring of working-class poetry.” St. Louis Post Dispatch |
"This is writing that makes you want to take a sledge to an especially offensive wall, makes you want to scare up an old girlfriend to offer one more body part to, makes you want to steal your boss's lawn furniture. This is fiction of urgency and rawness, the stories we tell when we've run out of lies. . .a real achievement, in other words, when so few of his peers seem to have so much at stake between their margins." Lee K. Abbott, Author of Wet Places at Noon |
the jobs are going fast and the best women are already taken.. In the title story, a group of unskilled laborers rerun memories of youth as they race against the dark to demolish the town's drive-in theater. A chain restaurant will take its place. Naomi dumps Dwight at the altar in "Hoops, Wires, and Plugs," but then Dwight fritters away the shamed agitation that could have propelled him beyond Windfall's stunting gravitational pull. In the final story, "Souvenirs," small-time hoods Paxson and Gus do what so many in Windfall can't: get out of town. They're off to Pittsburgh and a contract killing they hope will kick off a more rewarding life of crime. In hands less able than Eric Shade's, Windfall's men would be caricatures, screw-ups with all-too-easy access to the makings of tragedy: pills, booze, fast cars, guns, chain saws. Instead their stories give us new ways to ponder change and its consequences. Windfall stakes out a gritty quarter of the literary map shared by Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg and Thornton Wilder's Grover's Corners. Contents: Eyesores - Blood - The Heart Hankers - A Rage Forever - Stability - Kaahumanu - A Final Reunion - Hoops, Wires, and Plugs - The Last Night of the County Fair - Souvenirs |
Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction
From the book jacket:
These eleven interrelated
stories follow strands of hope
and nostalgia that bind together,
or fence off, the people of
Windfall. Eric Shade's fictional
western Pennsylvania community
is a place we all know: a town
bypassed by the interstate, its
rail line clogged with coal cars
that haven't moved an inch in
years. The men of Windfall still
vie on the time-honored fields of
contest—from bars to bedrooms
to football fields—but none is
These eleven interrelated
stories follow strands of hope
and nostalgia that bind together,
or fence off, the people of
Windfall. Eric Shade's fictional
western Pennsylvania community
is a place we all know: a town
bypassed by the interstate, its
rail line clogged with coal cars
that haven't moved an inch in
years. The men of Windfall still
vie on the time-honored fields of
contest—from bars to bedrooms
to football fields—but none is
Praise for the Flannery O'Connor Award:
—Alan Cheuse "One of the best known, and consistently best [literary competitions]." —Washington Post "The series forms a splendid outlet for committed writers of the short story." —Atlanta Journal-Constitution "The Flannery O'Connor Award . . . has brought out the best in a wide range of writers." —George Garrett |
