States of Grace

Fiction. Native American Studies. Stephen Graham Jones' first collection of flash fiction, STATES OF GRACE, is aptly named: these stories balance drama, play, and puissance, like forty-nine high-wire feats. While some stories arc through the briefest moments and interstices, others seem to examine an entire lifetime in a page. There are alcoholic fathers, definitions of infidelity, conversations in the middle of the ocean, murder, plotting murder, polite murder, shooting fish in a barrel, sons, and daughters. Never predictable, from the real to the surreal; there's no knowing what to expect from an attempt at a state of grace.