Worship of the Common Heart: New and Selected Stories

by Patricia Henley

An impressive overview of a writer whose career is still climbing, Worship of the Common Heart allows us a rare opportunity to observe twenty years in the evolution of a writer of uncommon talent and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878448021
• ISBN13: 9781878448026
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing
• Length: 225 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Only Trouble is Interesting

I'm pleased with this collection, though I hoped more than three new stories would be included. The other sixteen "selected" stories come from her first two collections, FRIDAY NIGHT AT SILVER STAR and THE SECRET OF CARTWHEELS. The majority of her published and collected short fiction is included in this volume, including such classics as "Same Old Big Magic," "Slinkers," and "The Birthing." I do like these new stories, too, the way each focal character's life is suggested and shown. Her characters make mistakes and deal with them, since only trouble is interesting in fiction. New stories like "Sun Damage" and "The Pleasure of Pears" suggest that, while Henley has already established herself as one of our most important story writers, much of her best work is still to come. I look forward to reading her books for a very long time, and I hope she continues to write stories even as her novels do well.

Women you know in your heart

In her debut novel, "Hummingbird House," Patricia Henley explored a flawed woman's humanity and how the choices she made echo throughout her life.Now in "Worship of the Common Heart," a new collection of 19 earthy stories Henley has written over the past 20 years, the reader traverses the fertile ground from which "Hummingbird House" sprang: The complexities of a woman's heart. Her characters are complex and common, some strong, some down-and-out, and the events in their lives are as momentous as the flapping of a butterfly's wings, which , of course, might change the course of history. And like waiting for history to unfold fully, the reader who expects to find resolution in these stories will wait forever.These are women we know. Each of them wants something, maybe not much ... but something. A daughter who seeks her mother to deliver news of her estranged father's death, but finds a broken heart. A young mother has an epiphany about life and love at the very moment she delivers a child. An older woman who prefers younger men finds unexpected joy in an unlikely place. A lonely mother and wife in an Alaskan tour-fishing camp sees her flirtatious teen-age daughter as both a savior and a rival. A young nun vacations with her wild sister and learns about worship.One such woman is Kit Ruckerson, the narrator of "Aces." She's a bit of human flotsam drifting downstream in life. After an adult lifetime of wrong choices, she is marooned in bleak Bozeman, Mont., with her toddler son (fresh from a foster home) and her one-legged ne'er-do-well husband (fresh from jail after being busted for operating a meth lab in a horse barn). It's Thanksgiving, the family is destitute, sleeping in a borrowed garage and eating from a Salvation Army charity basket while Dad shares a few hits of hash with a buddy.As Kit mooches for money from her mother, she feels like a she's "locked in my life like a child in a closet." But she's hardly a sympathetic creature. She's merely coming to terms with the excesses of her life:" ... a woman does not find out who she'll be or what life will be like until she has a child. And for most women, having a child is like having all the windows in your house painted shut forever. Liberty is my oldest -- thirteen. She lives in Pocatello with her Dad, who's been through several reincarnations -- surfer, computer repairman, snowplow driver. Liberty was pure accident, as I believe so many babies are, even now." It was "Hummingbird House" that established her as a rising literary star last year when it was a finalist for the National Book Award. The achievement was rare for two reasons: "Hummingbird House" was a first novel, and it was published by a small house, MacMurray & Beck in Denver. (Perhaps even more remarkable, MacMurray & Beck -- not one of the larger houses that tend to cherry-pick promising writers from independent houses -- will publish Henley's next full-length novel next year.) Henley's prose is powerful and honest, her char