ReviewsS02

My Favorite Lies

Ruth Hamel. Columbia, MO: U of Missouri Press, 2001. $17.95

In her collection of stories, My Favorite Lies, Ruth Hamel delicately addresses the theme of age with humor and irony. The effect is both tantalizing and engrossing. With its wonderful details and wry humor, this book reads like an airplane book, one that immediately pulls the reader into its growing tales of old.

The stories are so tightly woven that they work together in what at times feels like a cycle; although the characters do not recur through. . .

Feeding the Fire

Jeffrey Harrison. Louisville: Sarabande, 2001. $12.95

. . .In Feeding the Fire, memory and self continue to vivify each other in convergence, even when, as in "Our Other Sister," memory is purely fictional--"I can still remember / / how thrilled and horrified I was / that something I'd just made up / had that kind of power"--and even though, as in "Car Radio," the past yields to the present as the effect of "all those selves inside you coming together." In respect to his subject matter, then, Harrison may be regarded as a poet extending. . .

Yonder: A Place in Montana

John Hemingway. National Geographic Press, 2000. $26.00

Seldom do historians immerse themselves in the fabric of their work as John Hemingway has in Yonder: A Place in Montana. The novel is, as Hemingway has said, "a small story, overwhelmed by one intoxicating idea." In an effort to discover the history of his own 36-acre ranch in Montana, he conjures up a vision of the American West that has been clouded by a century and a half of urban expansion and industrialization. Hemingway touches the land and its inhabitants with sensitivity. . .

When the Moon Knows You're Wandering

Ruth Ellen Kocher. Kalamazoo: New Issues Press, 2001. $14.00

Ruth Ellen Kocher's second book of poems, When the Moon Knows You're Wandering, won the 2001 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press. I met Ruth at a seminar at this year's AWP Conference in New Orleans. Part of a four person presentation entitled "How to Know When Your First or Second Book of Poems is Finished," she shared her own process, one I found relevant as I read her collection and considered its structure and the energy that structure contains. She discussed a process. . .

Quakertown

Lee Martin. New York: Dutton, 2001. $23.95

In his first novel, Quakertown, Lee Martin adroitly explores racism, deceit, and change in 1920s Denton, Texas. Using historical precedent, Martin tells the tale of the forced relocation of a thriving African American township, Quakertown, and of the Black man who is coerced into aiding in the relocation of his community. Martin, however, does not construct a story of clear-cut good and evil; all of Martin's major characters prove themselves to be capable of both honesty and deceit. . .

We Were The Mulvaneys

Joyce Carol Oates. New York: Penguin, 1996. $13.95

In We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates gives us the story of a family coming unraveled. The Mulvaneys--the six of them "joined at the heart" as michael Sr. declares in such a direct way that it embarrasses his children--at one time lived at High Point farm several miles from Mt. Ephraim in upstate New York. At one time they were happy, secure in themselves. Michael Sr. was a successful businessman, the proud owner of Mulvaney Roofing and a member of the Mt. Ephraim. . .

Amazing Grace

Larry D. Thomas. Huntsville: Texas Review Press, 2001. $12.00

The sixty-four poems in this collection, the second book from up-and-coming Texas poet Larry D. Thomas, probe the complex interrelations between the land and the creatures that inhabit it. The book won the 2001 Texas Review Poetry Prize, and it is easy to see why these lean, sharp-edged poems were selected by the judges. Geographically and thematically, Amazing Grace encompasses all that is integral to Texas and Texans, while at the same time transcending. . .

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