Dancing on Barbed Wire

Co-authors Terry Dalrymple, Jerry Craven and Andrew Geyer deliver the excitement promised in the title and then some as they propel the reader through pages of love, lust, betrayal and redemption. The sixteen interlocked narratives move at a clip through time and space, from the Civil War to the present, from sun-scorched brush country to the lush and sometimes lethal Piney Woods. Although readers may detect shades of Hawthorne and Faulkner in the haunted houses, serial characters, disembodied voices and rattling family skeletons appearing in these stories, their ethos is distinctly Texan, complete with fields of swaying bluebonnets, sprawling ranches, a champion roping horse and plenty of three-alarm chile. The authors deftly sidestep stereotypes, however, instead showcasing such unexpected characters as a cowboy who hates cattle, a parrot that curses mailmen, and a Hill Country farmer who prays to the Roman goddess Fortuna. Reading this story cycle is like doing a jigsaw puzzle--there's no mistaking the satisfaction of snapping that final piece into place and admiring the master narrative that suddenly emerges.

Review :
Only narrative wizardry could alchemically transform dead dogs, decaying feral cats, shifting patronymics, and generations of genetic and self-made bastards into gorgeous literature. Yet this is precisely what these three masters of the short story have done in Dancing on Barbed Wire. The stories are so exquisitely crafted and ingeniously interconnected that they appear to be unrehearsed, spontaneous tales, a delight for readers and a despair for critics eager to pounce on any disqualifying faults. There is none. These stories are Texas prime; set in a lesser human and natural geography, they would be merely grotesque, unconvincing imitations. In the unforgiving Texas dust, scrub, toil, and trouble, they are metaphorically summarized by gut-ripping barbed wire and soul-refreshing blue bonnets. Here are people fallen so low that they can give good advice and so tough that they can be tender. To the cadence of country-western music we meet them time and again as they circle around the vast Jericho that is Texas until the walls crumble and we come see them as they are: people as spiritually and physically bent out of shape as a Picasso painting, yet still coherent and perhaps not greatly unlike ourselves. Superbly conceived and faultlessly edited, Dancing on Barbed Wire takes its well-deserved place at the head of its class. --Harold Raley, author of Lost River Anthology and Louisiana Rogue