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ABOUT THE COLLECTION
AMERICAN MASCULINE: MONTANA STORIES
 In Shann Ray’s elegiac and quietly poetic stories found in American Masculine the human inheritance of violence, grief, and dislocation meets the subtle power of forgiveness and the transparent nature of caring. A dying man faces dementia through the loving vessel of his wife’s integrity in “Before He Sleeps” (Northwest Review); in “The Dark Between Us” (StoryQuarterly), a woman and a man dream of the loss of a child but wake to a more ultimate reality; in the Pushcart nominated “The Great Divide” (McSweeney's, and The Better of McSweeney's, Volume 2) a large man seeks escape from the bonds of his overpowering physicality on a chilling train ride; and in “The Way Home” (South Dakota Review) a new father confronts the emptiness of his estranged interiority. With stories published in an array of literary journals, many among the nation’s finest, the collection is grounded in landscape and considers both the human and the divine.
In American Masculine the bold landscapes of Montana and the greater Northwest signal not only fear, descent, and desolation in people but also courage and the will to find a way where none is visible. |
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