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Cover credits:
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“Shann
Ray’s prose brings to mind Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx but is, thankfully,
entirely his own. His work is lyrical, prophetic, brutal yet ultimately
hopeful.”
—Dave Eggers |
Price: $15.00 USD
A MUSCULAR DEBUT STORY COLLECTION THAT
RECONFIGURES THE
AMERICAN WEST
* Winner of the 2010 Bakeless
Prize for Fiction, selected by Robert Boswell *
The American West has long been a place where myth and
legend have flourished. Where men stood tall and lived rough. But that West is
no more. In its place Shann Ray finds washed-up basketball players, businessmen
hiding addictions, and women fighting the inexplicable violence that wells up
in these men. A son struggles to accept his father’s apologies after surviving
a childhood of beatings. Two men seek empty basketball hoops on a snowy night,
hoping to relive past glory. A bull rider skips town and rides herd on an
unruly mob of passengers as he searches for a thief on a train threading
through Montana’s Rocky Mountains. In these stories, Ray grapples with the
terrible hurt we inflict on those we love, and finds that reconciliation, if
far off, is at least possible. The debut of a writer who is out to redefine the
contours of the West, American Masculine
is a deeply felt and fiercely written ode to the country we left behind.
“Ray writes with an unsettling power in his first
collection of stories, American
Masculine. The characters are as outsized as the western landscape they
inhabit, and the images are so disturbingly crafted . . . that they imprint
themselves on the reader like a beautiful infection. Good for the summer—or
anytime.”
—Esquire Magazine, “Three Books Every Man Should Read”
“Ray’s collection has an unsettling power as his
roughened characters incrementally come to terms with their humanity,
fallibility, and their realized capacity for atonement. This is a highly
accomplished and intensely lyrical debut.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Shann Ray writes about small western towns and their
residents in tough, poetic, and beautiful ways. I recognize many of these
people, and that’s good, but I’m also surprised and stunned by many others,
which is great. Buy the book and read it
tonight. You’ll love it, too.”
—Sherman
Alexie
“Ray’s stories resonate hard and clear, very much word
images reflecting the Montana setting of the collection. . . . Almost every
story is set under the great blue steel dome of the Montana sky. Almost every
story follows a hard man who cannot understand where hardness should end.
Almost every story watches as a lonely woman attempts to love such a man
without understanding the anger, the hurt and the loneliness beneath the iron.
Think Hemingway or Jim Harrison, and know that Ray's collection is the
deserving winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize.”
—Kirkus
Reviews, starred review
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