Rescue Missions: Stories

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Overview

"A range of small human dramas evoked with emotional intelligence and perfect pitch."—Amanda Heller, Boston Sunday Globe

Some of the stories in this "brilliant" (Library Journal, starred review) collection feature the war in Iraq, and others feature domestic wars; in every case, a character seeks to comfort or to save someone. Physical love, familial love, the need to give comfort—and the need for comfort—are themes skillfully rendered by this "master of the genre" (Booklist, starred review), whose achievements earned the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit for lifetime achievement in short fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393330427
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/17/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Frederick Busch (1941–2006) was the recipient of many honors, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, a National Jewish Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award. The prolific author of sixteen novels and six collections of short stories, Busch is renowned for his writing’s emotional nuance and minimal, plainspoken style. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he lived most of his life in upstate New York, where he worked for forty years as a professor at Colgate University.

Editorial Reviews

American letters endured a major loss in February 2006 with the sudden death of the author of North, The Night Inspector and 23 other books. Set in the present from the battlefields of Iraq (two stories: "Good to Go" and "Patrols") to upstate New York (where Busch taught for many years) these 15 works share a common theme of people trying to provide relief to those in physical, emotional and mental peril. In "One Last Time for Old Times' Sake," a married man tries to stop his lover from ending their affair so that she can nurse her dying husband. The recently widowed grandfather of a preschooler tries to recover his grandson's lost superhero cape and winds up in an encounter with the boy's teacher in "The Small Salvation." A woman hospitalized as a suicide risk, in "Metal Fatigue," challenges her father's notions of mercy during his visit. Some rescues are successful; others appear to fail; in many cases the rescuers are in the process of saving themselves. Together they offer an incisive examination of the idea of beneficence. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

The opening story, "The Rescue Mission," and the closing story, "Sense of Direction," of this brilliant collection by the late Busch (The Night Inspector) aptly illustrate the search for love, hope, and meaning that propels his characters through their ordinary lives. Most of the men and women in these compelling stories either try to pluck others out of surging and swirling tides of personal misery ("The Rescue Mission," "Good To Go") or attempt to resurrect old passions and loves that formerly animated them ("One Last Time for Old Time's Sake," "The Barrens"). Disappointment, regret, anger, hope, and passion quicken Busch's parables of the ragged ways that people fall in and out of love. Busch's quirky yet dazzling prose-"they were old people in the cul-de-sac of distress"; "they were one more man and one more woman caught in somebody's story"-is worth the price of admission. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/06.]-Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The missions of the title give a thematic unity to this dark collection of 15 stories from Busch (North, 2005, etc.), who died last February. Death haunts this collection. In "I Am the News," two brothers, one thriving, the other facing ruin, meet after the death of their father, a proud former Marine. Though the successful brother and his father were ideological foes, he respects the Marine ethos and looks out for his kid brother. Another veteran figures in the far more effective "Good to Go." Patrick, back from Iraq, has just bought a surplus army gun. Can his frantic parents wrest it away from this hard young man they no longer know? "Metal Fatigue" is another small gem. Harold is visiting daughter Linda in a mental hospital after her suicide attempt. Deranged, yet shockingly lucid, she uses another family tragedy, her grandfather's death, to browbeat her loving dad. That tight focus is missing from the off-key "The Bottom of the Glass," in which an obese, interracial married couple travels to France to console a distant relative after her second husband's death. Passionate sex as an antidote to death (the point of "One Last Time for Old Times' Sake") is tiresomely delayed by talk about death during a lovers' final tryst, while in "The Small Salvation," a middle-aged man's liberating sexual encounter with a kindergarten teacher is clouded by memories of his wife's death. In the title story, Edward is a staffer at a Rescue Mission. He knows all about abuse (his mother was killed by an abusive boyfriend) yet his attempt to help a doomed young woman is unavailing. And when, in "The Hay Behind the House," compassionate Cara travels upstate from New York to save her parents from old age,it's her mother who saves her from rape. These stories reaffirm Busch's familiar vision of good deeds counting for little in a dangerous world.

Kirkus Reviews