A Clear View of the Southern Sky: Stories (Story River - download pdf or read online

a transparent View of the Southern Sky unearths girls within the twenty-first century doing what ladies have regularly performed in pursuit of lifestyles, liberty, and happiness. In all of the ten stories from southern storyteller Mary Hood, ladies have come—by conditions and choice—to the very fringe of their recognized worlds. a few locate braveness to winnow and flow on; others search the endurance to chance and to stick. alongside the way in which hearts, bonds, pace limits, fingernails, and the 10 Commandments get damaged. airborne dirt and dust settles, yet those ladies do not.

In the name tale, a satellite tv for pc dish corporation supplies that happiness—or no less than entry to its programming—requires only a television and a transparent view of the southern sky. the fast tale itself unearths the adventure of a Hispanic girl whose project is to assassinate a mass assassin, an time table brought on through post-traumatic pressure wrought by means of seeing the murderer’s cynical grin on a information application. We keep on with her into the shadow of a huge satellite tv for pc dish on a roof around the road from the courthouse and eventually right into a women’s legal English-as-Second-Language type the place she needs to confront her lifestyles. She has slept yet by no means dreamed, and now she wakes . . .

In different tales Hood introduces us to a kindergarten instructor, shocked by way of a student’s blurted-out query, as she discovers her inner most vocation and the secret of its resource. We meet a widow who befriends a tender neighbor, in simple terms to gain they have to continue secrets and techniques from one another and carry speedy to their desire. a girl trucker discovers the intensity of her love as she imagines her cellular phone calls—and her sweetheart’s personal messages—winging their manner, tower to tower, alongside her interstate path. tales take care of one guy and of his better halves and the way they research the teachings merely love can train concerning the achieve and boundaries of possession and without end. the gathering concludes with the novella “Seambusters,” during which a various forged of ladies staff in a rural Georgia mill stitch camouflage for U.S. infantrymen in Afghanistan. the ladies are a part of a bigger function, and so they comprehend it. whilst the shadow of loss of life passes over the manufacturing unit, each one girl and the complete neighborhood discover what it particularly capacity to have American Pride.

New York instances best-selling author and tale River Books editor at huge Pat Conroy offers a foreword to the collection.