RUTTING SEASON

This arresting debut short story collection often finds its protagonists
poised between disaster and redemption.

It’s not always easy to foresee how the stories in Smith’s
collection will end. In “Mercy,” recently widowed Pam is doing her best to take
care of her young kids and the animals on her horse farm, but things keep
dying: the kids’ puppy, the kittens, goldfish, a duckling, the barn cat, some
chicks and goats. Even the hamster has gone missing. When Pam distractedly lets
her beloved Thoroughbred, Ace, get into the grain bin—“even an hour of gorging
on grain could kill a horse,” the reader has been warned—it looks like the
death toll on the farm will climb further. Will it? “Rutting Season” follows a
chain of office misery—Ray the computer guy’s unrequited crush on Lisa, in
fundraising, prompts a lunchroom encounter in which Ray treats his assistant,
Carl, cruelly—that may lead to a workplace shooting. Can an unexpected act of
kindness deflect the violence? “Siege” also hinges on a decision about whether
to come out shooting or surrender to life’s disappointments and injustices.
Will Amber, a young woman who picks up her late mother’s boyfriend’s gun after
he has been killed, choose violence or victimhood…or both? Yet the
unpredictability of the nine stories here, many of which deal with matters of
life and death, is only part of their charm. Nuanced and empathetic, at times
dangerous, tragic, or redemptive, these stories find their subjects in the
midst of pivotal moments in their lives, as they struggle with impulses and
actions both animalistically urgent and deeply, hauntingly human.

At once powerful and delicate, compassionate and cleareyed, this
book is sure to breed interest in a new literary voice.