DROWNED BOY by Jerry Gabriel

I prefer to read novels, but another scan of the library’s new book shelf showed the usual selection of mysteries and romances. In keeping with my philosophy that the smaller the author’s picture on the dust jacket, the more I will enjoy the book, I selected a thin volume of short stories, Drowned Boy by Jerry Gabriel. This is his first book of fiction for which he won the 2008 Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction.

Eight short stories are loosely linked together by a main character, his high school years, and his rural Ohio home town. I liked how the stories flowed together, making the book more like a novel than individual short stories.

Nate Holland is 8 years old in the first story and 24 in the last. Each story depicts some sort of loss: an older brother leaving home, an ace high school baseball player who goes into a slump, deaths of a father and a class mate, the burning down of a house, a breakup with a girl friend. But the stories are not sad and heavy. In each story the characters cope, reap some understanding of life, grow, and move on.

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