Tim Gautreaux

"In his stunning debut collection, Tim Gautreaux chronicles the lives of "ordinary" people - a farmer on his porch, a woman fixing her tractor, a train engineer passing through a small town - who face extraordinary circumstances or decisions. The farmer has just learned he must raise his infant granddaughter; the woman is about to watch a helicopter land in her back field; the train engineer will cause a colossal disaster. Most of these stories are...

With The Clearing, Southeastern Booksellers Award winner Tim Gautreaux delivers a brutal novel of love, family, and redemption. Randolph Aldridge travels to a snake-infested Cypress mill in Louisiana to find his brother Byron, a troubled veteran of World War I. Once there, Randolph finds that By is a shell of his former self-and that the murderous cartel controlling the mill's casino won't give them any peace.

"A widely celebrated novelist gives us a generous collection of exhilarating short stories, proving that he is a master of this genre as well. Once again, "he reminds us," wrote The Miami Herald, "that great writing is a timeless art." After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The Missing, Tim Gautreaux now ranges freely through contemporary life with twelve new stories and eight from previous collections. Most are set in his beloved...