Being Dead in South Carolina

by Jacob White

Overview

• Stories of the modern South, of people who no longer recognize themselves, who have arrived, like the Sunbelt itself, to a strange day that seems disconnected from all the old days, the old stories. Yet it's on this day we must always answer for ourselves&emdash;right an overturned car, recover a brother’s body, convince a son of our worth and his.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935248453
Publisher:	Leapfrog Press
Publication date:	11/18/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	271 KB

About the Author

Jacob White: • A South Carolina native, Jacob White studied creative writing at Binghamton University and the University of Houston, where he received the Donald Barthelme Memorial Fellowship in Fiction. His fiction has appeared in many journals, including The Georgia Review, New Letters, Salt Hill, and The Sewanee Review, from whom he received the Andrew Lytle Prize. He teaches creative writing at Johnson State College and co-edits Green Mountains Review.

Table of Contents

Being Dead in South Carolina

My Father at the Mountainside

Bethel

The Oldest City

Unvanquished by the Dusk

Maintenance

Wolf Among Wolves

Out With Father

The Days Down Here

The Hour of Revision

San Sebastian

Your Father Needs More Time

Feather by Feather

Yardage

The Plantation

You Will Miss Me

Editorial Reviews

12/02/2013
White's graceful yet gritty debut story collection demonstrates his great grasp of characterization and of life in the South. The folks who traverse through his set pieces are troubled, dejected, and drowning in the memories of days gone by while many are still treading water to stay afloat through the struggle of their daily lives. The title story concerns ne'er-do-well narrator Dayton, a gunshot victim whose injury has left him just slightly off-kilter as he tries to deal with his cousin Jackie's car, which he's flipped. This type of calamity and sobering aftermath saturates many of White's 17 stories. Some tales materialize into more lengthy novellas like "The Days Down Here," in which a reflective man and his dying wife ponder their life, their homestead, and a son who has grown up way too fast; in "Bethel," a brother recalls becoming reacquainted with his estranged and emotionally unstable sibling. Other stories establish their presence with an economy of poignant family-focused prose such as "My Father at the Mountainside," in which the narrator equates his fleeting happiness with his father's hand-me-down cowboy boots, or with the involuntary bonding occurring in "Out with Father." Collectively, White's assemblage, all of which have been previously published in a variety of literary journals, demonstrates an obvious and impressive love of language, all woven around the downtrodden layers of humanity in the bucolic South. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly