Chosen as an "Editors' Favorite Books of 2001" by The Bloomsbury
Review
These sixty-four sharply honed stories, selected by the author from more
than twenty years of work, showcase Jim Heynen's equal mastery of terse,
elegant prose and old-style country wit and wisdom. Every tale is an
unerring slice from the lives of a group of farm boys, each full of
mischief and witness to the world's tiny miracles. They make coat sails
to carry them down a frozen road, teach a three-legged dog to shake
hands, build a house from the junk grown-ups throw away, but they also
rescue pigs from an unexpected blizzard, feed apples to a blind pony,
and learn the songs of different birds. Along the way, they encounter an
unforgettable cast of characters: the goose lady, the girl at school
with six toes, the man who kept cigars in his cap, Spitting Sally, their
crazy Uncle Jack, and dozens more. Heynen's stories, as uniquely
American as those of Mark Twain or Sherwood Anderson, are ribald fun,
but, like all good country tales, they are also filled with surprises
and unexpected, deeper implications.
For this book Heynen has written twenty new stories and revised many of
those tales originally published in his first two collections, both now
unavailable. This retrospective volume serves as a wonderful companion
to his much-praised collection, The One-Room Schoolhouse: Stories About
the Boys.
