Byzantium: Stories
The 10 stories in Stroud’s Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize–winning debut vary greatly in time and place, but the world-weary yet passionate protagonists, all beset by mystery and misery, unify the collection. In lieu of his crumbling marriage, an American teacher flees to Germany, where he falls into an unwanted affair with an old flame. To avoid working for his father, a young idealist seeks out a religious commune in northern Michigan. A scrawny high-schooler helps rebuild a Texas town in the wake of a tornado and struggles to impress his dream girl at the local Christian hangout. A Byzantine nobleman, plagued since birth by a crippled hand, seeks to avenge his father by ending a holy man’s threat to the empire. After losing his lover to a pandemic, a nineteenth-century inventor creates a crude machine to cryogenically preserve anyone afraid of meeting the same end. Stroud’s command over both contemporary and historical narratives is reminiscent of Jim Shepard’s, though his sure and robust voice proves him to be a deeply compelling and original new storyteller. --Jonathan Fullmer