Curving Road: Stories (Illinois Short Fiction)

Drawing upon a style grounded in contemporary jazz, CURVING ROAD contemplates the 60's awakening, a time of intense relationships between individuals and the turbulent interrogation of social institutions, from within. In its three sections, Branches, The Stretch, and Sources, stories drive the links between the decisively unforgiving world of the North American inner city, the barrio, and slower beginnings that precede them. But how benign is a simple Caribbean village? In two chilling takes on village life, we are reminded that slower and simpler does not necessarily mean elementary and harmless. How does one arrive at the powerless edges of big city life, of marginalized youth, the day to day struggles within a society that dispossess and discards its vulnerable citizens, San Francisco's Fillmore District; Los Angeles' Watts; Chicago's Southside? The victories and losses, internalized celebrations or defiant confrontations, are often blurred, tallied, and mentally filed. Though CURVING ROAD is set in the 1960s, these stories and characters depicted in them are as stirring today as ever. CURVING ROAD presents us with lives that are often surprising, at time spiritually puzzling, but always inspiring.