The Way to Cobbs Creek

by Dabney Stuart

In the title story of Dabney Stuart's second collection of short fiction, Mark Random--grown from the childhood and adolescent complexities of Sweet Lucy Wine into his own fatherhood--seeks both to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826211437
• ISBN13: 9780826211439
• Release Date: November 1997
• Publisher: University of Missouri Press
• Length: 153 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A brilliant novella and three stories that work like a novel

Dabney Stuart, among our finest poets over the course of nearly a dozen collections, here continues his fine work as a fiction writer. Harkening back to his previous collection of stories, SWEET LUCY WINE, this new book includes a novella and three stories continuing the tale of the Random family and people in the family orbit. When I hear that fiction is poetic, I assume that means it is written in fancy prose and contains little narrative action. Stuart's fiction is poetic in all the best senses--highly compressed, vivid in scene and description, exquisitely written--but with a concurrent eye toward the deep exploration of character. A reader leaves THE WAY TO COBBS CREEK having come to know Mark Random, his brother, his parents and grandparents, and their wildly commingled histories in the same way that a beloved neighbor is known, through stories woven together over time, intimate in detail, rich in resonance. The title novella will remind you of A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, as indeed the whole collection will, because of the web woven by fishing throughout the tale, because of the familial complexity, and because of the stylish prose. But this is family done Southern, a turn more lavish and gothic, and the result is even more powerful emotionally.