"Gale Massey's insight and empathy resonate throughout this beautifully written collection. She has just the right words to make us feel the pain and hardships affecting her characters, but always with hope. This a must-read from a wonderful new writer. I can't wait to see what she does next." -Alafair Burke, New York Times-bestselling author of The Better Sister
"Through girlhood, adulthood, and motherhood, and against complex family dynamics, the characters in Gale Massey's exquisite collection strive to find their places in the world-and find themselves in the process. Sharply characterized, lyrically written, rich with surprises, rich with life-these are stories to savor." -Art Taylor, Edgar Award-winning author of The Boy Detective and The Summer of '74
"Gale Massey's astonishing collection, Rising and Other Stories, explores the themes of race, sexuality, childhood, family, hardship and courage in tough, clear-eyed prose. Girls and women on the edges of society are compassionately rendered as the reader is drawn into a world of small towns and smaller lives with such bare emotion it's hard to look away. These stories are more than enjoyable, they are addictive." -Louise Marburg, author of The Truth About Me and No Diving Allowed
"The emotions displayed throughout are sparse yet full of understated meaning. Truly a marvelous collection of short stories." -Suanne Schafer, author of A Different Kind of Fire and Hunting the Devil
"Massey's writing twists the hearts out of her characters and leaves them exposed, broken, tender, and pulsing on the page. Be forewarned-your own heart will join them." -Sandra Gail Lambert, author of A Certain Loneliness
"Gale Massey's characters spring to life with unparalleled vividness and verve. These are stories that will stay with you, haunting and wondrous." -David James Poissant, author of Lake Life and The Heaven of Animals
"Rising and Other Stories is a stunning, glorious collection of short stories by a writer firmly in control of her considerable talent." --Southern Literary Review
"Gale Massey's wonderful new collection Rising and Other Stories takes us into a world of small towns populated by people who are coping with life-altering-sometimes catastrophic-events." --Lambda Literary
2021-06-25
Massey offers a short story collection about family members’ unpredictable lives.
This poignant, heartbreaking book offers 13 stories featuring themes of social injustice and familial grief. The strength and suffering of women, especially among the rural and working poor, fill Massey’s pages, from a mother in “Racine” who’s working at one of her two jobs when her 8-year-old son shoots a classmate with a handgun to an adolescent in “Not So Fast,” who’s forced to swimming nearly nude among hungry alligators for the entertainment of male partygoers. Other women choose to depart difficult lives on their own terms; these include a grief-stricken child in “Differences,” who, after spreading her brother’s ashes into the Grand Canyon, implores her friend Angel to push her into the ravine, and a widow in “Low Tide” who leaves her daughter behind to crawl far into the ocean after a mother turtle. Each of Massey’s characters attempts to break constraints imposed upon their lives; their tales unsettlingly look at the secrets people hide and the solace they seek. Like waves against a beach, the diverse stories flow quickly in succession, blending them into a cohesive whole. Families are at the center of these emotionally raw but tightly written narratives, which highlight the destructive power of drugs, poverty, and discrimination. And although the stories depict the experiences of unrelated characters, all are bound together as children of nature, which influences and contextualizes their actions. Natural images are present throughout the work: the ocean, a condor, and, notably, a sea turtle who, after laying her eggs, abandons them to survive as they may. The depiction of nature, in all of its wildness and danger, seems to show human problems to be manageable—our differences diminished and our hopes limitless.
A powerful and often haunting compilation.
