Jim Tomlinson's previous book of short stories, Things Kept, Things Left
Behind, won the prestigious Iowa Short Fiction Award and received
enthusiastic reviews. The New York Times compared the strong sense of
place in Tomlinson's writing to that found in the works of Flannery
O'Connor and Alice Munro. The stories in his new collection, Nothing
Like An Ocean, also reflect Tomlinson's awareness of place, revisiting
the fictional town of Spivey, a community in rural Appalachia wh