Settright Road
Subtitle: stories
By: Jon Boilard
Edition: First US edition.
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 175
ISBN-13: 9781941088623
Subjects: City and town life; Fiction
Work titles: Short stories
Description: Settright Road is a collection of 20 short stories and one longer piece of fiction, all set in and around a string of busted Massachusetts mill towns during the cocaine-fueled 1980s. Its pages are colored by unforgettable characters: a teenage lothario whose plans to escape his one-horse town by hopping a train to California are monkey-wrenched when he impregnates a local girl from a prominent family; fresh-out-of-prison Sean Folan, who nearly kills a man in a bar fight just so he'll get locked up again; underage Bill Buick, who sells dope to hard-up townies and seduces high school girls, when he's not driving a wedge between his aunt and her new boyfriend; and Eskimo -- trouble in a too-tight dress -- a dancer and a poet whose unsavory relationship with a strip club owner comes to a tragic end when she falls in love with a notorious backwoods brawler. Jon Boilard lets loose these conflicted characters against a backdrop of the abject poverty that sits in stark contrast to the lush New England scenery; then he challenges us to root for these desperados despite the weight of their human errors.
Table of contents: title: Just the thing --; title: Six stones down the mountain --; title: Dark days --; title: Storm chaser --; title: The Mohawk Trail --; title: Settright Road --; title: Nice sleep --; title: Barnyard --; title: Cut me in pieces and hide --; title: Nuts --; title: I won't wear black --; title: Flunky --; title: Moon or Heaven --; title: Stay where you are --; title: Watch out, townie boy --; title: Damn the wind --; title: Main Street incident --; title: Listen to the train whistle blow --; title: Sometimes there's God --; title: Furthermore.