Born in New Orleans and raised in
Covington, Louisiana, author Bruce Maclachlan "Skip" Horack, Jr.
is a former Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.
Released in 2009, Horack's debut, short story collection The
Southern Cross, won the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference
Bakeless Prize and the author was hailed by NOLA.com's book editor
Susan Larson as a "storyteller of uncommon talent" whose stories
are "artfully evoked and deeply felt."
From small towns all over Louisiana,
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama and Texas, Horack draws stunningly
vivid pictures of life, love, hope and disappointment in the sixteen
stories of The Southern Cross. The reader is helplessly drawn to the
characters in such a short period of time, some stories only spanning
a few pages. Unique to the American South, the tales will
particularly resonate for local readers.
There's an undeniable flow to the
collection as a whole, pulling you from story to story, but there are
singular tales, ones that shine brighter than the rest. "Junebelle"
depicts the life of an elderly woman in a retirement home somewhere
near Baton Rouge. June is a persnickety woman who keeps to herself,
internally criticizing her children and grandchildren's life choices.
She's terribly lonely and stand-offish until she meets a nice
gentleman while having her evening cocktail and the home's small
bar. The tale warms the soul with its postcard-perfect imagery and
settings.
Another stand out was "The High Place I Go". A cheating husband has driven a nurse into the arms of one of her patients, a paraplegic. The affair with her patient lasts for several months until she finally decides to take the RV and run off with her lover, only to quickly realize she has come full circle.
Separated into seasonal chapters -
spring, summer, fall and winter - each glimpse in The Southern
Cross was deceptively simple, rich with passion and emotion, just
like any good short story should. Often short story collections tend
to lack the popular appeal of novels, but one would find it difficult
not to enjoy these colorful, moving scenes of life in the Gulf South.
