Sylvan Caravan: Stories

From the mountains of Western Pennsylvania to the burning valleys of an America coming apart at the seams, Charlie Sutherland's debut collection announces a writer of uncommon power and originality.These are stories of people at the edge of things-towns, relationships, a natural world that is quietly disappearing. A pornographer searches a dying county for the girl he loves while wildfires consume the hills around him. A barroom philosopher tends to his aging aunt and ailing cousin while violence closes in from every direction. A young woman learns that music begins with trauma and points to her own heart to prove it.Sutherland writes in the vernacular of the people he writes about, their rhythms, their humor, their capacity for tenderness and sudden violence, without a trace of condescension or distance. With influences from Faulkner to Steinbeck to Carver, Sutherland's prose is precise where it needs to be, and loose where it wants to be, moving with force, determination, and visceral inevitability.