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These stories are an attempt to give a distinct literary voice to the people and
places of rural Southern Indiana. They also strive to deal with certain elements
indigenous to that region, some of which can be described generally as the tension
between modernization and tradition, family and marriage as a source of both support
and strife, and the ever-present sense of struggle and loss that comes from living in a
region of economic depression and blue-collar sensibility. That said, they also
represent the unique ability of the Midwesterner to face and overcome the most
difficult of circumstances, even at high costs. Put differently, they seek to explore
(though not answer) the questions of how and why people choose to press forward
each day when tomorrow is not expected to improve upon yesterday.
On the craft level, these stories are an effort to explore such themes through the
prism of discrete points of view. No single context can capture the varied experience
of any place or people fully, and because of this, these stories, while standing alone as
narratives, point to a larger, more complex method of establishing the voice mentioned
above. It is the author’s hope that they will eventually be collected in a larger volume of stories – some linked narratively, others thematically – that will offer one
perspective on this underrepresented but compelling region of rural America. |
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