The Talker

by Mary Sojourner

Overview

"If you ever wondered what life is like for the down and out, the remarkable Sojourner lays it out in precise and unsparing prose in her latest collection of short stories."

—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review


From security guards and jack rabbits to bartenders and blue herons, the desert–dwellers in The Talker surface with grit and grace from dust–blown trailers, ancient Joshua trees, and artificial lakes. With her signature down–to–earth storytelling style, Mary Sojourner explores the lives of working class people, threats to Western landscapes, and the complexities of love. The Talker depicts a community weathering the desert glare of the Mojave, seeking refuge, truth, and escape.


MARY SOJOURNER is the author of the novels, 29, Sisters of the Dream and Going Through Ghosts; the short story collections The Talker and Delicate; an essay collection, Bonelight: Ruin and Grace in the New Southwest; and memoirs, Solace: Rituals of Loss and Desire and She Bets Her Life. She is an intermittent NPR commentator and the author of many essays, columns and op–eds for High Country News, Writers on the Range, and other publications. A graduate of the University of Rochester, Sojourner teaches writing in private circles, one–on–one, at colleges and universities, writing conferences, and book festivals. She believes in both the limitations and possibilities of healing through writing—the most powerful tool she has found for doing what is necessary to mend. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781937226695
Publisher:	Torrey House Press
Publication date:	03/14/2017
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

MARY SOJOURNER is the author of the novels, 29, Sisters of the Dream and Going Through Ghosts; the short story collections The Talker and Delicate; an essay collection, Bonelight: Ruin and Grace in the New Southwest; and memoirs, Solace: Rituals of Loss and Desire and She Bets Her Life. She is an intermittent NPR commentator and the author of many essays, columns and op–eds for High Country News, Writers on the Range, and other publications. A graduate of the University of Rochester, Sojourner teaches writing in private circles, one–on–one, at colleges and universities, writing conferences, and book festivals. She believes in both the limitations and possibilities of healing through writing—the most powerful tool she has found for doing what is necessary to mend. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Table of Contents

Great Blue 1

Fat Jacks 19

Kashmir 39

Sign 57

Up Near Pasco 77

Cyndra Won't Get Out of the Truck 93

Nautiloid 133

The Talker 163

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/23/2017
If you ever wondered what life is like for the down and out, the remarkable Sojourner lays it out in precise and unsparing prose in her latest collection of short stories. The author grabs you with an irresistible first line in each tale that leads into a singular world in the Southwest where desperate individuals grapple with getting by day to day. “Great Blue,” about life behind the scenes in a restaurant, showcases a transformative love story gone terribly wrong when addiction rears its ugly head. “Fat Jacks” delves into the life of a divorced father who barely makes ends meet with a night-shift job and lives for visits with his son. In “Kashmir,” a teenager coping with her father’s death finds an unlikely kindred spirit in a patient in the nursing home where she works to help her mother pay the bills. The title story exposes the deadly effects a newcomer has on a motley group of characters who’ve found a safe haven in a group of cabins in northern Arizona run by a former alcoholic who strictly enforces abstinence. Throughout, Sojourner’s ability to bring extraordinary characters to life and bring depth and heart to ordinary circumstances makes this collection memorable. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"If you ever wondered what life is like for the down and out, the remarkable Sojourner lays it out in precise and unsparing prose in her latest collection of short stories. Throughout, Sojourner's ability to bring extraordinary characters to life and bring depth and heart to ordinary circumstances makes this collection memorable."

—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review


"Sojourner uses passion, high–energy storytelling, and unflinching empathy to break the reader's heart."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS


"The abiding theme is that mistakes will be made, losses will pile up and yet—by accident or luck or sheer determination—most of these characters will manage to endure."

—THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW


"The heart in these stories beats out of its chest. Sojourner is the voice of the luckless, the rejected, and the defiantly free. Reading this collection will give you blisters in tender places, and you'll be proud of them."

—BRADEN HEPNER, author of Pale Harvest


"Sojourner is a weaver of the heart. She adds perfect threads, creating lives and moments so absolutely real and human you feel them in your own self, whether you want to or not. There is a sting beneath everything she writes."

—CRAIG CHILDS, author of Virga & Bone


"Long ago, farming families would leave a candle in a window at night so that a wayward soul wandering in the dark could find a way to comfort. This best describes Mary Sojourners' tales of small lives struggling for connection."

—H. LEE BARNES, author of The Gambler's Apprentice

From the Publisher

2016-12-18
In this novella and seven stories set in the southwest, the mostly working-class characters struggle to rise beyond their pasts and their own worst tendencies with varying degrees of success.In the opening story, "Great Blue," a restaurant worker with a history of "bad choices" falls for a "sweet-skinny and ginger-haired" dishwasher with a master's degree, a killer recipe for marinated olives, and a taste for drugs. Despite moments of genuine sweetness, it doesn't end well. "Fat Jacks" is bittersweet but more hopeful as a former computer salesman, now night shift "Security Engineer," makes a strenuous effort to pull his life together when his ex-wife understandably finds him too irresponsible to trust with their young son. Four stories deal with grief: after her father's sudden death, a teenager takes a part-time job at a nursing home where she bonds, not quite believably, with a former biker over the Led Zeppelin song "Kashmir"; "Sign," which has an autobiographical feel given its writer narrator, offers a nuanced exploration of grief that combines love, anger, and a middle-aged daughter's grudging identification with her dead father; an upwardly mobile Native American college student returns to her aunt's double-wide to mourn her cousin's suicide in "Up Near Pasco"; and in "Nautiloid," the jokey tone of the gay narrator never masks his sorrow over the death of his best friend from cancer. Less successful, the long story "Cyndra Won't Get Out of the Truck," about the failing marriage between a Marine who returns from Iraq with a drinking problem and the young wife who gambles away their savings, leans on a message of salvation through recovery groups. And the eponymous novella, about a community of losers on the mend in a semicommune threatened by an insidiously dangerous newcomer, is too thick with serpent-in-Eden, good-and-evil imagery and melodrama. Although the uplift can get heavy-handed, at her best, Sojourner (29, 2014, etc.) uses passion, high-energy storytelling, and unflinching empathy to break the reader's heart.

Kirkus Reviews

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