Hazards of Nature: Stories: Stories

As the title of Brandon Dudley's excellent chapbook suggests, bad things happen to the people in his stories. A young boy is teased past bearing by his brutish father and brothers. A man faces an agonizing choice: to give up either the wife he loves or the children he has always wanted but that she refuses to have. An elderly widower finds solace in his attachment to a tree he has planted but is hopeless when it comes to connecting with his fellow human beings. These are ordinary people, and the trouble that finds them is ordinary too. Whether or not you've ever been old and isolated, or helplessly bullied, or torn between two equally powerful desires, the range of human emotions here-fear, anger, love, sadness, loneliness, mortification, loss-is sure to be familiar. What makes the stories in Hazards of Nature so compelling for me is not just the writer's insightful portraits of his characters' struggles but his sensitivity in regard to their pain. -from the Introduction, by Sigrid Nunez

Review :
Here is a sharp new voice; and here are three stories with a hard edge but a raw, tender heart. Brandon Dudley is a writer to watch. -Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Finalist for The Great Believers In this triad of beautifully arced, visceral, and vivid stories, Brandon Dudley writes courageously and intensively into the heart of toxic masculinity. A boy, a young man, an old man, all locked inside the prison of their own insecurity, their fear of showing weakness, their fear of asking for love. These stories walk right into the anger and grief that comes with understanding that you are not the ones making the world anymore. They raise our ire and our compassion, almost against our will. It's a kind of dazzling high wire act Dudley is pulling off here, at the end of the patriarchy, one we can learn from, and incorporate, as we see what happens next. -Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country These are irresistible stories! Tense and vivid and surprising. I love the way Brandon Dudley seems equally fascinated by the struggles that separate us and the stubborn love that keeps us whole. You're in for a real treat. -Lewis Robinson, author of Water Dogs Hazards of Nature is an excellent example that "grit lit" is not only a Southern genre. Brandon Dudley describes rural Maine and its people with a vivid, often unflinching eye. -Ron Rash, author of Serena and Something Rich and Strange Like his peers Ron Rash, Claire Davis, Annie Proulx, and Wiley Cash, Brandon Dudley is in the business of carving lives worth living from the hardscrabble topographies of the heart. These are stories that swing between the tough and the tender, stories of regular people trying to find their way in a world filled with heartbreak, and they are not to be missed. -Christian Kiefer, author of Phantoms "Like the eyes of predators shining from the darkness of the woods, the stories in Hazards of Nature burn with a menace that must be feared and confronted. From the tension between father and son, husband and wife, or the tension of mortality itself, spring biting indictments of human frailty and stunning revelation. Powerfully written with empathy and imagination, brutal and beautiful, this chapbook announces Brandon Dudley as a potent new voice in American letters." -Alan Heathcock, author of VOLT and 40 "Brandon Dudley's stories are hard scrabble mud tracks ripped into the banks of stagnant ponds and the fears that sensitive boys hold onto tightly and don't dare whisper out loud. Every sentence is coiled tightly and strikes just at the moment the reader realizes what is moving in the grass. I couldn't stop reading-I was pulled through like a grip on my hand that I could not shake." -Jodi Angel, author of You Only Get Letters from Jail