New Short Stories by the Author of Shotgun Lovesongs
by eapearce
Nickolas Butler, author of the bestselling novel Shotgun Lovesongs, which was published in early 2014, has just written a new book, this time comprised of short stories. Readers loved Shotgun Lovesongs for its stunning portrayal of a place (rural Wisconsin) and the people who live there (four lifelong friends who have reunited for a wedding). In this new book, Beneath the Bonfire, Butler again shows his talents at depicting “a place and its people with such love that you’ll find yourself falling for them, too.” Butler again sets his pieces throughout the rural Midwest, and as a native of rural Wisconsin himself, you can tell that he truly knows these places and their residents.
In one story in Beneath the Bonfire, a group of men spend the weekend hunting for mushrooms in the wilderness where they grew up… and which some still cannot seem to escape. In another, a woman helps a second woman get revenge against a man who had committed crimes not only against her, but against their entire community. The opening story tells of a young couple attending a “chainsaw party” to cut down trees for wood for the upcoming winter. Totaling 10 stories in all, Beneath the Bonfire is a beautiful and surprising collection with, as the book jacket reads, “a landscape that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has traveled the back roads and blue highways of America.”
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