American Masculine: Stories

by Shann Ray

Overview

Winner of the 2010 Bakeless Prize for Fiction, a muscular debut that reconfigures the American West

The American West has long been a place where myth and legend have flourished. Where men stood tall and lived rough. But that West is no more. In its place Shann Ray finds washedup basketball players, businessmen hiding addictions, and women fighting the inexplicable violence that wells up in these men. A son struggles to accept his father's apologies after surviving a childhood of beatings. Two men seek empty basketball hoops on a snowy night, hoping to relive past glory. A bull rider skips town and rides herd on an unruly mob of passengers as he searches for a thief on a train threading through Montana's Rocky Mountains.

In these stories, Ray grapples with the terrible hurt we inflict on those we love, and finds that reconciliation, if far off, is at least possible. The debut of a writer who is out to redefine the contours of the American West, American Masculine is a deeply felt and fiercely written ode to the country we left behind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555975883
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	06/21/2011
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Shann Ray holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Alberta. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, Narrative Magazine, and Story Quarterly. He teaches at Gonzaga University, and lives in Washington State.

Editorial Reviews

Ray's engrossing collection is set in and around rugged Montana terrain and trades heavily in themes of pain, forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope. From the opening story, "How We Fall," dysfunction is established as a common undercurrent; the rocky relationship between a husband and wife hinges on alcoholism, infidelity, and unconditional absolution. "The Great Divide," the best and most ambitious piece, is about an "oxlike" Indian man aboard a train on the trail of an elusive thief, providing the perfect counterweight for the short standout "The Way Home," about a father changing his behavior in order to properly care for his newborn daughter. Sobering reality has the restorative power to reboot the strained marriage in "The Dark Between Them," the father-son bond severed by child abuse in "In the Half-Light," and in "When We Rise," where two former basketball players yearn for their halcyon days. Ray's collection has an unsettling power as his roughened characters incrementally come to terms with their humanity, fallibility, and their realized capacity for atonement. This is a highly accomplished and intensely lyrical debut. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Ray's stories resonate hard and clear, very much word images reflecting the Montana setting of the collection.

The bookopens with "How We Fall," a melancholy tale of Ben Killsnight, a Northern Cheyenne, and his white wife, Sadie, as they follow a lonely trail through the bitter country of addiction and then back to each other. "The Great Divide" chronicles the life of Middie, a massive, protean figure, the product of a Depression-era abusive childhood on an isolated Montana ranch. From rodeo to railroad, Middie's tale is reminiscent of the John Henry legend as he finishes college, labors on the railroad and fistfights his way across the great northwest because "he knows the taste of blood." "Three from Montana" introduces Shale and Weston and their father Edwin, an itinerant steel-spined high-school basketball coach. Unfathomable loss crashes into a single mother in "Rodin'sThe Hand of God" after her two young daughters drown. Shale appears again in "When We Rise," a meditation on basketball, brotherhood and the precious magic of being alive in the moment. Tori falls for Shannon in "Mrs. Secrest," but she doesn't see him clearly, a theme threading through the book—women expecting something from men they will never receive. In "The Dark between Them," Zeb, a white boy taking refuge on the reservation, meets Sara, a hard Northern Cheyenne girl, but both are caught up in meth, methadone and mushrooms. Almost every story is set under the great blue steel dome of the Montana sky. Almost every story follows a hard man who cannot understand where hardness should end. Almost every story watches as a lonely woman attempts to love such a man without understanding the anger, the hurt and the loneliness beneath the iron.

Think Hemingway or Jim Harrison, and know that Ray's collection is the deserving winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize.

Kirkus Reviews