11 Stories

by Chris Cander

Overview

When Roscoe Jones, a one-time trumpet prodigy, loses his finger, he loses more than his ability to play. Instead of becoming a musician, he becomes the superintendent of the Chicago apartment building where he has lived since birth. Very soon, his life is no longer his own; he fades into the background, plumbing and fixing and toiling for the tenants populating the eleven stories above him. Although they hardly notice him as anything but a working part of the building, he develops a sometimes uncomfortable intimacy with the details of their complicated lives. Every night, in the privacy of his basement quarters, alone with his secret longings, he plays his trumpet. That is until the evening he climbs to the roof to play in public for the first time in fifty years - and the course of his life is irrevocably changed. For some, losses may turn, unexpectedly, to gain. For Roscoe, the relationships he forms with the tenants - two, in particular - justify the amputation of his finger and the forfeiture of his dreams. This is a story about sacrifice and service, longing and love - and the abiding hopefulness of the human heart that connects us all. AWARDS Best Indie General Fiction 2013 (Kirkus Reviews) Gold Medal, Popular Fiction, 2014 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) Book of the Month, January 2014 (AiA) Silver Medal, Popular Fiction, 2014 eLit Awards

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780988946507
Publisher:	Rubber Tree Press
Publication date:	04/10/2013
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	5.36(w) x 8.02(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Chris Cander is a storyteller with many outlets: writing novels, children's books, articles, essays, and screenplays, and teaching for Houston-based Writers in the Schools (WITS), which engages children in the pleasure and power of reading and writing. She well knows that the pen is mightier than the sword, but she's willing to wield one of those, too. A former fitness competitor and model, she currently holds a second dan in taekwondo.

Chris is a member of of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Author's Guild, and MENSA. She lives with her husband and children in Houston, Texas.

Editorial Reviews

Cander explores isolation and communication in this elusive but engaging portrayal of the life and death of Roscoe Jones, a 67-year-old Chicago apartment building superintendent. A former trumpet prodigy who lives an anonymous life, Roscoe falls to his death one evening from the roof of his building.Cander infuses Roscoe's reflections while plunging 11 stories with an abundance of realistic detail from which her portrait of an isolated but dedicated man emerges.As Roscoe's concerns expand from his trumpet and apartment to the sufferings of his building's tenants, he is impelled to extend compassion, feel pity, and to encounter love. The recurrent image of broken sidewalk slabs provides an unobtrusive metaphor for the hidden afflictions with which all people contend. Cander suggests that Roscoe's finding peace through friendship is a human necessity.Her conclusion provides grounds for belief in the possibility of redemption; her sensitivity ensures that this novel will appeal to anyone with a story to tell, a group that includes us all.

Publishers Weekly

The superintendent of an 11-story apartment building in Chicago falls from the roof, remembering stories of the tenants on his way down. As a teenage trumpet prodigy, Roscoe lost a finger in the gate of his apartment building's elevator. His trumpet dream shattered, he became superintendent of that same building, where he's lived all his life. Now living in a Spartan basement apartment, he sees to the needs of the building's tenants. But Roscoe never gave up on the trumpet, and on a fateful autumn evening, he ascends to the roof of the building to play his trumpet for all the world to hear. The people down on the sidewalk are entranced. Roscoe finishes and modestly bows--but loses his balance and begins his fatal plunge. Then the frame story launches: Time slows as Roscoe descends 11 floors, remembering a story about someone who lived on each floor he passes. Sylvia Freeman, a hoarder, lived on 10. On seven lived exiled Joaquin Rojas, whose Cuban friend sent him books stolen from Castro's library. David and Bill, the gay couple who lived on the sixth floor, split up over a stupid misunderstanding. Mrs. Delpy lived on five, where her psychotic son Martin crawled out on the ledge, followed by Roscoe. Finally, on the second floor lived Roscoe's only lifelong love, Iris Montgomery, with their illicit love consummated just once. Cander's book isn't quite Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1919), though. Some stories, like the perennially clogged toilet on eight, are playful anecdotes. Yet many of the tenants show heartbreaking spiritual damage; some of them are admirable, some not so much. Quiet, diffident Roscoe, who's spent half a century supporting them all in one way or another, just as admirably supports these stories. A wonderfully clever compilation.

Kirkus Reviews