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RIVER STREET
A Novella and Stories
By Phil Condon
Published by Southern Methodist University Press
Dallas, 1994
Read the reviews
In "Starkweather's Eyes" a grieving son remembers his frightened mother and absent father in the fall of 1957 when the notorious teenage mass murderer rampaged across Nebraska. "Babyman" depicts a bitter and obsessed Detroit rent-a-cop who exploits women and their babies until he meets a woman tougher than he is. Another woman whose third marriage is faltering has an erotic encounter on an Amtrak train that causes her to reexamine her life's old and new losses in "Seven." The title novella portrays a drifter riding the rails into a mountain town where his desperation spawns mesmerizing violence.
In language rich in metaphor and detail, Condon's stories expose the turbulences of the human spirit and reveal the outside-chance possibilities his characters have for grace.
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Praise for River Street:
"A short story that is a page-turner? That is the brilliant transaction Phil Condon pulls off again and again in River Street, a book that hums with narrative energy. I could not stop reading."
— Kelly Cherry, author of The Lost Traveller's Dream, We Can Still Be Friends
"Phil Condon has heart, and as Ray Carver used to say, 'he has seen some things.' River Street is a fine sweet read, a terrific beginning for one of our most promising new writers."
— William Kittredge, author of Owning It All, Collected Stories of William Kittredge
"Phil Condon writes a dangerous prose as sharp and necessary as razor wire. Read him with care; you will be rewarded."
— Rick DeMarinis, author of Apocalypse Then, The Year of the Zinc Penny, Under the Wheat
"Phil Condon is one of those rare discoveries, a writer who combines moral purpose with a storyteller's gift for straight-ahead narrative. This is a distinguished debut by an amazingly talented new writer."
— C. Michael Curtis, Senior Fiction Editor of The Atlantic Monthly magazine
"Phil Condon's debut story collection is a tour of life's harsh but ordinary mysteries: fatherless sons, childless mothers, errant travelers and unlikely lovers, all in search of filial shelter, emotional destinations, degrees of hope. River Street weighs into that half-light of love and loss that wavers in the vast heart of our land, seeking the ties--however worn or wounded--that bind."
— Richard Currey, author of Fatal Light, The Wars of H
River Street, A Novella and Stories
SMU Press (Southern Methodist University), Dallas, 1994
Hard: ISBN 0870743724 Price 22.95
Paper: ISBN 0870743732 Price 10.95
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