Once More to the Stars

In Stories for Seven Mountains, Michael Chrasta offers a sweeping, imaginative exploration of American life across its deepest formative spheres: Self, Family, Church, Education, Media, Government, and Labor. Fables, parables, visionary tales, satires, and modern myths-these stories move freely between the ordinary and the transcendent: an entire Midwestern town lifted into the sky; a corporate world haunted by moral blindness and pride; a giant orange cream cake suddenly appearing in a parking lot in Texas; along with classrooms, churches, families, and workplaces transformed by grace, failure, repentance, and wonder. Everyday American life becomes the raw material for art-traffic jams, gyms, schoolyards, offices, and neighborhoods opening into moments of revelation. Written in a voice that echoes Aesop, Flannery O'Connor, C.S. Lewis, and the biblical prophets-yet unmistakably contemporary-these stories explore the great questions of American life: Who are we becoming? What have we traded for convenience, success, or progress? And what might still be recovered-through humility, repentance, imagination, and grace? Once More to the Stars begins inward, tracing the formation (and deformation) of the self through moments of memory, calling, and moral awakening. These are stories of identity-how people come to know who they are, and how easily that knowledge can be lost.