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MARY SOJOURNER is the author of 29: a Novel; the short story collection 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 occasional commentator at her local NPR station 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.
The Talker
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ISBN-13:
9781937226701
- Publisher: Torrey House Press
- Publication date: 02/20/2017
- Sold by: Barnes & Noble
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 200
- File size: 845 KB
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"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
"In [these] stories set in the southwest, the mostly working–class characters struggle to rise beyond their pasts and their own worst tendencies…Sojourner uses passion, high–energy storytelling, and unflinching empathy to break the reader's heart."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
"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
"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. Some construct fences around themselves and blame the fence, others find comfort in acceptance. They are, like their creator, sojourners. In every case, Mary Sojourner brings candlelight to their struggles."
—H. LEE BARNES, author of The Gambler's Apprentice
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 and ancient Joshua trees. With her signature down–to–earth storytelling style and uniquely empathetic eye, Sojourner writes a community seeking refuge, truth, and escape within the desert glare of the Mojave with this novella and story collection.
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Publishers Weekly
★ 01/23/2017If 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.)
From the Publisher
"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
"In [these] stories set in the southwest, the mostly working-class characters struggle to rise beyond their pasts and their own worst tendencies…Sojourner uses passion, high-energy storytelling, and unflinching empathy to break the reader's heart."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
"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
"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. Some construct fences around themselves and blame the fence, others find comfort in acceptance. They are, like their creator, sojourners. In every case, Mary Sojourner brings candlelight to their struggles."
—H. LEE BARNES, author of The Gambler's Apprentice
"The bio of fiction writer, journalist, and sometime NPR commentator Mary Sojourner says she 'believes in ... Healing through writing.' In this collection of short fiction, it feels as if she’s writing to heal characters, as well. Sketchy, stretched, beaten up or beaten down, wrestling with personal demons—drugs, booze, gambling, bad partner–choices—they seem one final reckless move away from really doing themselves in when Sojourner conjures up a little magical grace. Featuring aging hippies, security guards, restaurant staff (plus one books and articles writer, buried mid-collection) who drive old pickups or travel by train, Sojourner’s stories bring to life high desert blue collar America. But the one element that consistently doesn’t need healing? Nature: A star-studded desert sky. Elegant blue heron. Shimmering aspen grove on Hart Prairie. Whiff of creosote in the rain. Juniper smoke."
—CHRISTINE WALD–HOPKINS
"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
"In [these] stories set in the southwest, the mostly working–class characters struggle to rise beyond their pasts and their own worst tendencies…Sojourner uses passion, high–energy storytelling, and unflinching empathy to break the reader's heart."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
"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
"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. Some construct fences around themselves and blame the fence, others find comfort in acceptance. They are, like their creator, sojourners. In every case, Mary Sojourner brings candlelight to their struggles."
—H. LEE BARNES, author of The Gambler's Apprentice
"The bio of fiction writer, journalist, and sometime NPR commentator Mary Sojourner says she 'believes in ... Healing through writing.' In this collection of short fiction, it feels as if she’s writing to heal characters, as well. Sketchy, stretched, beaten up or beaten down, wrestling with personal demons—drugs, booze, gambling, bad partner-choices—they seem one final reckless move away from really doing themselves in when Sojourner conjures up a little magical grace. Featuring aging hippies, security guards, restaurant staff (plus one books and articles writer, buried mid-collection) who drive old pickups or travel by train, Sojourner’s stories bring to life high desert blue collar America. But the one element that consistently doesn’t need healing? Nature: A star-studded desert sky. Elegant blue heron. Shimmering aspen grove on Hart Prairie. Whiff of creosote in the rain. Juniper smoke."
—CHRISTINE WALD-HOPKINS
Kirkus Reviews
2016-12-18In 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.