And The Fires We Talked About

Kelly's stories are tough, real, honest, and always true. Unadorned by gimmick or artifice, the pieces in this collection-all framed between the imagined voices of that most primal couple, Adam and Eve-carry us deep into the heart of a wild American world that in many ways (and most definitely for a lot of younger people) sadly no longer exists. The human settings of these stories-bars, strip clubs, dingy apartments, goldmines, ranches, logging crews, homesteads, highways-are rich with details and textures that linger long after the closing sentences. Beyond those, however, there's always a sense of something even larger and older surrounding the often small, sometimes strange, yet always compelling events his narrators are recounting. Sometimes this larger thing is the natural world-the oceans and forests, the plants and animals-always placing the events into their proper context. At other times, it's the human interactions themselves that somehow seem to take on this greater, at times even mythic, weight and power. Reading these pieces, we recognize how the hungers and desires, the fears and hopes, the regrets and epiphanies of his people have all somehow entered our cultural DNA, and how-like them--it's up to each of us to come to terms with all the beauty and terror that comes with being alive.