鈥淪idle Creek,鈥� by Jolene McIlwain (Melville House)
Lately, the news out of rural Appalachia has not been good: a train derailment, toxic chemicals, the opioid epidemic, deaths of despair. In contrast to all of that, Jolene McIlwain has written a stunning new collection of short fiction that presents a region known for hunting, fishing, fracking and Rolling Rock beer in all of its tender and terrifying complexity.
In the title story, a father places warm stones from Sidle Creek on his daughter鈥檚 belly to relieve the debilitating cramps of endometriosis. A retired math professor in 鈥淭he Fractal Geometry of Grief鈥� builds a glass shelter on his wooded property to protect a doe he fell in love with after his wife鈥檚 death. In 鈥淟oosed鈥� a man small 鈥渋n position, stature and intelligence鈥� earns money staging cockfights, then dogfights, and then, in a horrifying twist, fights between his four young sons because those are the most exciting of all to the rich, powerful men who bet on them.
A striking number of the 22 stories in the book feature the distinctive voices of young girls and women and center the experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and infertility. 鈥淵ou Four Are the One鈥� is narrated by Lanie, one of four precocious preteens who spend a summer helping care for a neighbor with a high-risk pregnancy, an all-consuming activity that Lanie declares to be 鈥渕uch more exciting than being at the pool and trying to ignore everyone bikinied who鈥檇 `developed.鈥欌��
The first-person-plural of the story is only one of the thrilling narrative devices that McIlwain uses to tell her linked stories. Some are short enough to qualify as flash fiction, others as lyrical as poetry. Still others make daring leaps in time like 鈥淪eeds,鈥� told from the point of view of a man looking at a childhood picture of his recently deceased wife and imagining the traumatic life, 鈥渂eaten speckled plum鈥� by an abusive stepfather, that lay ahead for her.
Characters in a few stories pop up in others but what truly knits the collection together is McIlwain鈥檚 reverence for and knowledge of the natural world. Whether she is writing about a couple that reads prophecies on the shells of red-winged blackbirds or an Italian grandma who believes a garlic necklace is a cure-all, McIlwain brings to life a luminous world of plants and animals that even the extraction industries, sleazy bettors and smooth-talking city hunters 鈥渨ith slick cars and six-figure salaries鈥� cannot destroy.
Ann Levin, The Associated Press
