Fish Grooming and Other Stories: Short Stories by Joseph Powell

“Joseph Powell’s stories catch small-town people at awkward, heartfelt moments. “I’ve had four husbands,” an elderly woman tells a hairdresser, “and I’m working on the fifth. And I loved them all, the dears. They were as different as mongrel dogs.” To a teenage boy, the lust he feels for his older brother’s girlfriend feels plain wrong, “like goosing the Queen of England or watching the sway of a nun’s breasts beneath her habit.” Meanwhile, at the funeral of a rough and opinionated matriarch—she used to grind her cigarettes out with her right foot, but now is getting buried in “an orange satiny dress with a matching belt and buttons up the front”—the younger grandson tries to figure out why his older brother, just back from Vietnam, is weeping. A lovely wit and sympathy knit these tales of working class life in the western U.S. These stories have that utterly unfakeable tone that takes over when writers are talking about stuff they’ve been watching for years.” —Philip Garrison, Author of Because I Don’t Have Wings