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ABOUT THE STORIES IN
THIS HOUSE OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT
In Shann Ray’s elegiac and richly poetic stories found in This House of Darkness and Light 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) 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 9 stories published in an array of literary journals, many among the nation’s finest, Ray’s work is grounded in landscape and considers both the human and the divine.
Often located in Montana, in Ray’s work landscape attends people like a vastness of fear, descent, and desolation as well as hope and possibility. Sun and sky, water, land, and night mirror the ineffable in the life and soul of humanity. |
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