My Lord Bag of Rice: New and Selected Stories

Rating:
Summary: The extraordinary grace of ordinary people
Review: Carol Bly's stories call me home. She captures nuances of Midwest culture, and in particular, aches in the souls of Midwest women, with a startling precision, honesty, and eloquence that reminds me of everyone I ever grew up with.

But a Bly story goes beyond simply the personal level of her characters' lives. "Chuck's Money," for example, the final story in her new collection, is a penetrating analysis of issues of class structure, power politics, and moral crises in Small Town America as they play themselves out in quiet marriages, church carpools, and funeral suppers. Through the eyes of bookkeeper Leona and her oak tree of a husband Allen, we see how the suicide of a teenager sets in motion a series of events that redress old and new injustices. The net result is an exuberant image of people who can be so decent sometimes it takes your breath away.