Customer Reviews

Airlift: Short Stories

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Over the years, I have avoided reading short stories--other people's short stories, that is. I felt like they were unfulfilling and ended too soon. But recently I was laid up for a while and was searching for something to help me stop thinking about myself. I noticed Jan Seale's book, which I had purchased at a writers' conference a number of years ago, and thought I'd give it a look.

What a marvelous surprise! I was hooked after the first story about a gentleman who--while taking chemo treatments--was building a purple martin birdhouse as a way of looking forward to a future and to make his mistake-of-a-second-wife crazy.

Although the stories in this book are only a few pages long, each one stands alone as a unique slice of life. All are done from the perspective of different characters--old, young, men, women, different ethnicities and races. And you feel you are that person.

My favorite was To Reap, To Thresh, about a farmer who was planning his tombstone with a picture of a combine chiseled on it. What a great idea--to have a monument that shows what you did in this life. It makes you think, What would I put on mine?

I highly recommend this book. You can read one story at a time and have lots to reflect on or consume the whole book like I did. Then you can go back and read them over again.

by Doris Anne Roop-Benner
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

It's a treat to see the Rio Grande Valley through Jan Seale's eyes. Her descriptions fits my memories of the Valley, in some cases, to a "T" and in other stories it gives me a fresh perspective.
Here's what Texas Books in Review (Gabriel Stauf) says of it "These individualistic voices do much to give each story its own flavor, develop setting and mood, and make the characters as familiar as the reader's next door neighbor."