Twelve Women in a Country Called America - Softcover

Cherry, Kelly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 194120919X ISBN 13: 9781941209196

Publisher: Press 53, 2015

Synopsis

Kelly Cherry's tenth work of fiction delivers twelve compelling stories about women of the American South. These are women struggling to find their way through the everyday workings of life while also navigating the maze of self. From a young woman's nightmare piano lesson to an elderly woman's luminous last breath, Twelve Women in a Country Called America takes readers on a journey sometimes dark, sometimes funny, and always enlightening.

About this title

Review:

These stories are thrilling to read. They are bold and exploratory, truthful, and unflinching. Kelly Cherry is a magnificent storyteller!

—Bobbie Ann Mason, author of In Country and The Girl in the Blue Beret

 

In these richly imagined stories, from New Orleans to Huntsville to Memphis to Richmond—all around the South and back again—women are working through their thwarted lives: afraid, defiant, longing, loving. Kelly Cherry’s heroines are dramatically different from each other, but they are all coming to terms with the human condition in ways that reveal that condition to the reader. Funny, tender, surprising and exact, this is a stunning collection from a writer at the top of her form.

—Janet Burroway, author of Losing Tim: A Memoir

 

Kelly Cherry is a writer's writer, a master storyteller who writes about people we recognize in a style so easy we're surprised to find ourselves suddenly in deep, deep water. The past often collides with the present in these complicated families, almost-families, and relationships; many of the stories turn on those moments when we find out who we truly are, or who we will become. Deeply psychological yet compulsively readable, these stories are like real stories told to us by a trusted friend.

—Lee Smith, author of Guests of Earth: A Novel and The Last Girls

 

Twelve Women in a Country Called America is the latest instance of Kelly Cherry’s straight shooting about the often crooked kind we are. Clearly, ours are lives wobbling out of round. Herein, women and men, southerners every one, cleave to lies that sustain and stories that end happily. Kelly Cherry knows better. Kelly Cherry, going long or short between margins, is a national treasure.

—Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once: New & Selected Stories

 

In Twelve Women in a Country Called America, Kelly Cherry deftly captures the lives of a remarkably diverse group of women from the American south. Each woman we meet in these stories is distinctly drawn and presented with heart, wit, and wisdom. That Kelly Cherry, one of our most talented and prolific contemporary writers, can show us our world and the women who populate it in such moving and memorable ways may not be a surprise, but, page after page, it’s an absolute pleasure and a gift.

— Judith Claire Mitchell, author of A Reunion of Ghosts: A Novel

 

About this edition

• Publisher: Press 53
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 194120919X
• ISBN 13: 9781941209196
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232