Last Rites: Stories

Ernest Hemingway wrote, All stories…end in death. Writing with the ringing lyricism, cinematic detail, and wry humor of his debut novel The Coal Tower, in these stories Tony Gentry interrogates that notion. A father and son share a moment of everyday epiphany on their farm. An elderly widower must choose between a circumscribed life where every breath is an effort and a saving reunion he barely trusts, while another finds solace in the company of an old bear. The ghost of a Confederate general wanders the historic precincts of modern-day Richmond, Virginia. The First Lady deposes the President. A boy finds not love but something more in a kiss. On a canoe trip, two middle-aged brothers confront mortality and the mystery of what lies beyond. Veterans of WWII and the Korean and Viet Nam wars face their demons, seeking reasons to go on. In the longest tale here, a fall from a wheelchair tests the will of a man haunted by the car crash that severed his spine and killed his young daughter years ago. And cancer tells its own origin story, that of a real estate mogul turned megalomaniac. Keenly observed, inventive, and thought-provoking, these stories peek past the thin curtain between everyday reality and the tempting whisperings that lie beyond, walking the strange border that straddles life and death, where our hearts and minds collide.