The Fountain of Highlandtown: Stories [Paperback]

Rafael Alvarez (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In The Fountain of Highlandtown, Rafael Alvarez makes his debut as a writer whose voice has already matured into a savvy, fleet prose style, and a pan-ethnic vision in which his allegiance, rather than to political correctness, is to integrity and vitality." -- Stuart Dybek -- Author, Childhood and Other Neighborhoods

Product Details

• Paperback: 177 pages
• Publisher: Woodholm House Pub (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965634280
• ISBN-13: 978-0965634281
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,109,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Cartographer of Baltimore Maps Out the Holy Land, November 14, 1997

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A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fountain of Highlandtown: Stories (Paperback)

You don't need to have lived in Baltimore to be enchanted with these mystical stories, but only those wholly unacquainted with the Charm City of the Patapsco Drainage Basin will have a prayer of reading them without a lump in the throat, a mist in the eyes, or some prickles of goose flesh.

"The Fountain of Highlandtown" is a wonderful, magical first collection of short stories by long-time Baltimore Sun reporter and feature writer Rafael Alvarez. Most of the stories are set in the Greektown/Highlandtown area of Baltimore, and beautifully evoke the spirit of the diverse immigrant cultures--Greek, Spanish, Ukranian, Polish, Italian, and . . . well, spin the globe--that thrived there in the first half of this century, and still hang on amidst creeping urban decay. As William Faulkner did with Yoknapatawpha County (his fictionalized Oxford, Mississippi), Alvarez is excruciatingly faithful to the earth-bound details and cadences of this strange corner of Baltimore, which he calls his "Holy Land." But, also as in Faulkner, the stories of these characters and their lives transcend mere nostalgia and "local color" and speak to some of the great themes of literature: the amazing grace at work when love and the human heart is found, lost, betrayed, redeemed.

So order your copy today, hon! And come see us in Bawlmer, down Hollandtayon!