Water Street

Water Street

Overview

The residents of Water Street are hardworking, God-fearing people who live in a seemingly safe and insulated neighborhood within a small Kentucky town: "Water Street is a place where mothers can turn their backs to flip a pancake or cornmeal hoecake on the stove and know our children are safe." But all is not as it seems as the secret lives of neighbors and friends are revealed in interconnected tales of love, loss, truth, and tragedy.

In this critically acclaimed short story collection, Crystal Wilkinson peels back the intricate layers that form the fabric of this community and its inhabitants — revealing emotionally raw, multifaceted tales of race, class, gender, mental illness, and interpersonal relationships. The thirteen succinct stories offer fragmented glimpses of an overarching narrative that emerges, lyrical and fierce. Featuring a new foreword and a new afterword which illuminate Wilkinson's artistic achievement, this captivating work is poised to delight a new generation of readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780813169101
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Publication date: 02/24/2017
Series: Kentucky Voices
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 200
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Crystal Wilkinson is author of The Birds of Opulence, winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and Blackberries, Blackberries, which won the 2002 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature. The winner of the 2008 Denny Plattner Award in Poetry from Appalachian Heritage magazine and the Sallie Bingham Award from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, she serves as Appalachian Writer-in-Residence at Berea College and teaches in the Spalding University low residency MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Table of Contents

Welcome to Water Street 1

My Girl Mona: Yolanda 7

Water Street, 1979: Junior 19

In Plain Site: Jeanette 39

An Ordinary Man: Reverend Townsend 53

Between Men: Mouse 65

The Evolution of Sandy Crawford: Sandy 11

The Girl of my Dreams: Kiki 91

Spoiled: Maxine 103

The Fight: Toni and Candy 111

Sixteen Confessions of Lois Carter: Lois 125

Respite: Pearline 137

Man Crazy: Mona 153

Before I met my Father: Angie 161

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