num_pages: 192
description: Presenting a diverse range of authentic characters, the sixteen stories inLove to the Spirits are unified by a common theme: the characters' effortsto complete perilous passages in their lives across a span of icedangerously thin. The collection opens with Jenna, an endearingtwelve-year-old girl learning to hustle pool from her grandfather in WestTexas, and ends with two feuding brothers in a rickety airplane off NorthCarolina's Outer Banks spreading their mother's ashes over the water. Inbetween, we meet a gravedigger baffled by a body that mysteriouslyresurfaces after storms and a dying con man who sells his "services"--apromise to convey messages to departed loved ones--to the residents of anursing home. A bus driver is terrorized by an armed hijacker. A musicianwith a stolen mule seeks refuge in his estranged wife's backyard. A hungrychild draws strength from the power of a family story relating how greatgrandfather survived being adrift at sea. Although the stories are told in avariety of voices, they all illuminate people in moments of crisis andtransition, who make their journeys with subtle, often comic, grace.
language: English
title: Love to the Spirits
titlecomplete: Love to the Spirits
ratings_count: 2
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY)
category: Short Story Fiction
publisher: River City Pub