About the Book
Every now and then, I catch a faint glimpse of her torch through the trees. She has let her hair down by now, black as this night, long to the waist, flowing out straight behind her like a mane. A break in the trees, a long clearing, a pass--the road. Follow it north, up and over the hill ...Up above, flocks of sacalait head south. Even here, on this scar in the wood, a drowned moon lights the road up the rise. --from "Chocolate Bay" The stories in Drowned Moon are set in Southeast Texas, where the Old and the Lost Rivers meet and empty into the bay. This unique geographic location, with its unpredictable waters, its sinking swamps, its bayous and sloughs, provides a haunting landscape for Glenn Blake's characters--Jessie in "Old River," searching for stability in the aftermath of a hurricane; Hannah in "Open Season," trying to save her doves from an unusual birthday gift; or Drew in "Chocolate Bay," raising his son in a house on a peninsula, isolated from the rest of town. Blake's stories proclaim the lives of those who "find themselves awash in their own worlds, adrift in their own lives--people who salvage what they can of their hopes and dreams from the encroaching tides."
"With deceptively spare prose, Glenn Blake has packed considerable depth, mystery, and sense of place into this debut collection of short stories."--Si Dunn, Dallas Morning News "These eight stories evoke the mysteries of nature and the human heart and the intersection between the two."--Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle "Blake's prose story-telling style is deceptively simple. He writes in a straightforward manner that belies the complexities of the human experience he is at the same time subtly presenting to his reader."--Jere Real, Richmond Times-Dispatch "Let's face it, being born and raised between the Old and Lost Rivers is going to do something permanent to your consciousness, and what it has done in Glenn Blake's case is stick there. So much so that when he writes about it, you can feel it, smell it, taste it, hear it, see it, that strange, lost, unknown corner of Texas. It is a whole other country and Blake gives it to you with all its oddity and mystery, as it is."--Molly Ivins "Glenn Blake is an eloquent singer of gulf coast storms and tides, both meteorological and human. This first collection of his stories is a delight."
--John Barth, The Johns Hopkins University, author of Chimera "These are unique stories, regional at the surface, universal at the core. A Winesburg, Ohio for our time."--Max Apple, author of Roommates: My Grandfather's Story "Reticent, closely guarded, and cryptic, Glenn Blake's terse prose partakes of poetry's careful measures. His stories concern rice fields, houses that disappear into the encroaching high water, and the poignantly named Old and Lost Rivers. He has caught with a peculiar mixture of sadness and humor the personality of this rough, modest, and little-known place."--Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After "Blake's stories are beautifully understated yet energetic, his imagination elemental yet nuanced. Drowned Moon reverberates with the rites of nature and rural life. Blake creates a world that will long remain in the reader's memory."--Robert Phillips, author of Spinach Days and Breakdown Lane
About the Author :
Glenn Blake teaches creative writing in the English Department at Rice University. He was awarded "Special Mention" for the Pushcart Prize in 1997 and received the PEN Southwest Award for fiction. He has published stories in American Short Fiction, Southwest Review, Grand Street, and other literary magazines.
Review :
With deceptively spare prose, Glenn Blake has packed considerable depth, mystery, and sense of place into this debut collection of short stories. -- Si Dunn Dallas Morning News These eight stories evoke the mysteries of nature and the human heart and the intersection between the two. -- Fritz Lanham Houston Chronicle Blake's prose story-telling style is deceptively simple. He writes in a straightforward manner that belies the complexities of the human experience he is at the same time subtly presenting to his reader. -- Jere Real Richmond Times-Dispatch Glenn Blake's stories are ambitious, hard-edged, with much at stake. The starkness of the style is a reflection of the environs in which the stories of Drowned Moon are set... Drowned Moon is a dark, foreboding book-a drowned moon put into print... Each of these stories is tight, finely beveled and curt, eerie. The weight of what is not said is crushing, broods like the hot and damp petrochemical air... In Drowned Moon, Glenn Blake gives us a voice from a place most of us would not inhabit or visit, a place we'd avoid. Yet though we'd likely stay away from Chocolate Bay, such places aren't going away. They're fertile ground for fiction. The rules of engagement there are ancient, universal, brutal and pure. -- Eric Miles Williamson Southern Review
