Eclipse: (Working Lives)

�In Jeanne Bryner�s Eclipse, there�s a master storyteller at work. The rich, textured world of these stories, and the strong and refreshingly frank narrative voices, bring to life the everyday kindnesses and betrayals that mark the calendar of our lives. While the characters in these stories struggle, it is a struggle blessed with hope. A hope we can all carry with us into the future.� - Jim Daniels, author of No Pets.

About the Author :
Jeanne Bryner was born in Appalachia and grew up in a blue collar family in industrial Ohio near Warren. She graduated from Newton Falls High School, Trumbull Memorial Hospital School of Nursing, and Kent State University�s Honor�s College. She has worked as a certified emergency room nurse at Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital since 1979. She also teaches writing workshops in schools, universities, nursing homes, and with cancer support groups. She edited two anthologies, Safehouse: Women Living With Cancer and Song: Breast Cancer Survivors. Her Breathless collection of poems was published by Kent State University Press, followed by Blind Horse: Poems from Bottom Dog Press. Her book on the lives of historical and contemporary nurses, Tenderly Lift Me, is forthcoming from Kent State University Press.

Review :
�Jeanne Bryner has rare gifts: a level gaze, a keen heart, and �ears to hear� what people mean by what they say. Similar to a solar eclipse, her storytelling enables us to look at the searing light of a given soul. And her art�compassionate, often wry�also provides a filter, so we can bear what we look upon.� --Marilou Awiakta, author of Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother�s Wisdom. �The voices in Jeanne Bryner�s collection of short stories, Eclipse, are passionate, humane, and experienced. The depth of her characters, and the poignant details of the situations they face, demonstrate the healing power of storytelling.� -Zee Edgel �These are powerful stories about the dignity, hope, wit, compassion, and struggles of seemingly ordinary people in small towns of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Jeanne Bryner moves beyond K-Mart class stereotypes into deeper spaces, uncovering a complexity and variety of working-class lives few acknowledge. These narratives emerge out of the sure hand and eye of an accomplished writer who offers an expansive and convincing aesthetics of human relationships.� -Janet Zandy, editor of What We Hold in Common: An Introduction to Working-Class Studies. �In Jeanne Bryner�s ECLIPSE, there�s a master storyteller at work. The rich, textured world of these stories, and the strong and refreshingly frank narrative voices, bring to life the everyday kindnesses and betrayals that mark the calendar of our lives. While the characters in these stories struggle, it is a struggle blessed with hope. A hope we can all carry with us into the future.� - Jim Daniels, author of NO PETS.