These carefully observed, sometimes surreal stories capture characters in freefall: a woman grieving the loss of her infant finds a listserv of parents whose dead children have been returned. An indigent loner agrees to bury a reanimated corpse, a pregnant teenager pines for an astral world. Bannatyne’s characters—wolf wrangler, tarot card reader, guru, anthropologist, Soviet farmer, or parents of children taken, gone, returned, or fragile —will find a place in your heart. -Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers
$14.95now only $10! Pre-order now and save over 30%. Ships February 15, 2022
Lesley Bannatyne’s stories have won the 2019 Tucson Festival of
Books award, the 2018 _Bosque Literary Journal_ fiction prize, the
2020 ghoststory.com prize, and were finalists for the 2020
Tennessee Williams Prize and the 2021 Fish Story Prize (Ireland).
Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Christian
Science Monitor, and Zone 3, Craft, Shooter, and other literary
journals. As a journalist she’s covered stories ranging from
druids in Massachusetts to relief workers in Bolivia. Her most recent
creative non-fiction book, Halloween Nation, was a Bram Stoker
Award finalist. Unaccustomed to Grace is her first collection of
short fiction.
Reader beware: the stoic characters in Unaccustomed to Grace will inhabit you. They don’t just grieve their loss, they stalk redemption—or are stalked by it—like a feral cat to be caught and tamed. After a child’s death, his mother chases a decrepit angel, demanding a do-over; a corpse berates a stranger to bury him; a nurse yearning for love longs to end her patient’s life. Bannatyne is a trickster, infusing these tales with a loving, light-footed humor, casting a fiction-magic spell that dissolves the ground as you read, to reveal a world at once wilder, more wounded, and more true.
– Sammy Greenspan, publisher, Kattywompus Press; author, Skin Hunger
Unaccustomed to Grace
$14.95
In stock
Description
Runner-Up, 2021 Acacia Fiction Prize
These carefully observed, sometimes surreal stories capture characters in freefall: a woman grieving the loss of her infant finds a listserv of parents whose dead children have been returned. An indigent loner agrees to bury a reanimated corpse, a pregnant teenager pines for an astral world. Bannatyne’s characters—wolf wrangler, tarot card reader, guru, anthropologist, Soviet farmer, or parents of children taken, gone, returned, or fragile —will find a place in your heart. -Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers
$14.95now only $10! Pre-order now and save over 30%. Ships February 15, 2022Lesley Bannatyne’s stories have won the 2019 Tucson Festival of
Books award, the 2018 _Bosque Literary Journal_ fiction prize, the
2020 ghoststory.com prize, and were finalists for the 2020
Tennessee Williams Prize and the 2021 Fish Story Prize (Ireland).
Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Christian
Science Monitor, and Zone 3, Craft, Shooter, and other literary
journals. As a journalist she’s covered stories ranging from
druids in Massachusetts to relief workers in Bolivia. Her most recent
creative non-fiction book, Halloween Nation, was a Bram Stoker
Award finalist. Unaccustomed to Grace is her first collection of
short fiction.
Reader beware: the stoic characters in Unaccustomed to Grace will inhabit you. They don’t just grieve their loss, they stalk redemption—or are stalked by it—like a feral cat to be caught and tamed. After a child’s death, his mother chases a decrepit angel, demanding a do-over; a corpse berates a stranger to bury him; a nurse yearning for love longs to end her patient’s life. Bannatyne is a trickster, infusing these tales with a loving, light-footed humor, casting a fiction-magic spell that dissolves the ground as you read, to reveal a world at once wilder, more wounded, and more true.
– Sammy Greenspan, publisher, Kattywompus Press; author, Skin Hunger