Review by Booklist Review
Fourteen linked stories take place on one languid summer day in small-town Indiana, with a cast of characters that are impossible not to love. Turner, a retired custodian, is tending his zinnias. WWII veteran Horace remembers a love affair as he gets ready to mow his lawn. Teenagers Della and Sugar meet up in a barn for make out sessions. Myrtle has splurged on a new pool. It is the early 1980s, and Hunt's lovingly crafted world--the same introduced in his acclaimed novel Zorrie (2021)--appropriately includes shifting politics, deviled eggs, and waterbeds. This quiet day is trapped in time, and readers get to look in at the perfect details. Here, people don't share their feelings much, but Hunt's descriptions--a lip quiver, a kind nod, a quiet look--tell all. The characters themselves are also kind and observant of each other's needs, with a shared respect that is immensely appealing. The narrative voices bring enough diversity to keep things interesting, as do the threads--a detail, a character, even a slowly illuminated mysterious event--that weave throughout the collection.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hunt's amiable collection of 14 interconnected character studies (after Zorrie) is set over the course of one day in the early 1980s. The connective tissue of the stories, each of which is titled after its protagonist, is the characters' Indiana hamlet, friendly on the surface but riven with subterranean traumas. Candy, an older woman who hosts the monthly bingo club, was close with Irma, who has recently died by suicide. Horace, a bachelor, is a WWII veteran and retired farmer who mows the lawn and goes for a walk to avoid dwelling on his combat experiences on D-Day. Della is a high school student training for the track team who secretly meets classmate Sugar Henry in his parents' barn, where she trades him kisses for Kraft Cheese Singles. A young man named Toby, whom Hunt implies is neurodivergent, derives satisfaction from the people who honk at the signs he holds on the side of the road ("Honk If You Love the Gipper"; "Honk If You Love Jesus"). Though Hunt's portraits don't quite cohere into a narrative, they do convincingly capture the era and a sense of place. Fans of Hunt's previous small-town studies will appreciate these lovingly drawn portraits. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winner Hunt brings to life the complex and shared experiences of living in relationship to other people in his newest story collection (after The Paris Stories). As readers follow one character to the next, all of them residing in Bright Creek, IN, the shapes of their interwoven bonds to place, history, and community are revealed. Filled with quirky personalities, pithy language, and a colloquial sensibility, this volume illuminates much--where to turn left or right on what street, whose barn is across from which cornfield, the hours of the Galaxy Swirl soft-serve, and who works at the Marsh grocery store--as each story adds new levels of understanding to the last. Gladys finds solace in walking through the shady corn fields. Hank, a respected retired sheriff, likes to climb to the top of his grain silos to dream of whales. Be they kindhearted mechanic, stalwart loud-laughing matron, tolerated local moocher, or identity-seeking teen--all of the characters have dignity and reason. VERDICT While the stories work as stand-alone pieces, they also form a beautiful whole. This is a loving portrait of small-town Middle America that resonates well beyond its borders.--Laura Florence
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Covering just one day, these closely linked stories reveal the many ties and secrets of a rural Indiana town. It's the early 1980s and Reagan is president. As she prepares for the monthly gathering of the Bright Creek Girls Gaming Club, Candy Wilson realizes she's forgotten to buy paprika for her deviled eggs. Elsewhere in Bright Creek, Turner Davis is late getting his zinnias in. Horace Allen smells the sea from the mix of herbs and vegetables in his garden. Each of the 14 stories is named for a town resident, and most are told in a close third person that shares characters' thoughts and memories, often in connection with their neighbors. The paprika and zinnias might suggest a fair helping of the mundane, but Hunt, whose novels have featured war, racism, and sorcery, has a lot going on here. As he charts how often, and amusingly, characters' paths cross in a small town, he delves into "all those little secrets that weren't secrets at all," from a teacher who is fired amid rumors of lesbianism to a high school custodian who was once a "promising ballroom dancer" to a World War II veteran who found unrequited love on Crete. Hunt gets a lot of life on the page with the shrewd accumulation of details. The teacher, Irma Ray, recently hanged herself, and her real secret is a late revelation. Also appearing is Zorrie Underwood, the title character from Hunt's novel Zorrie (2021), which furnishes a few other people in the new work. This sort of cross-pollination comes up in recent novels by Elizabeth Strout and Michael Farris Smith, both writers with a defined literary terrain, which may be something Hunt is working toward. In broader terms, his book harks back to Our Town, of which Thornton Wilder said he sought "to find a value above all price for the smallest events of our daily life." An entertaining work of exceptional vitality. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
