Airlift: Short Stories
by Jan Seale
Category: Short stories

The tales in Airlift ask the reader's respect for the small life, lived victoriously or in defeat. Tightly structured, the stories move from a beginning group of aging protagonists in their inexorable certainties, to a set featuring midlife yearning mothers, falling back to a group of younger women. The collection ends with initiation stories evoking the mystery, pain, and exhilaration of being a child. Many of the characters struggle out of simpler agrarian pasts toward the complexities of modernity. Some follow peculiar visions, and some are children whose innocence is a saving grace to themselves or to surrounding adults. Seale's narrative voice is clear and straightforward, always engaging, never boring.