Customer Reviews

Narrow Beams

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Finely written stories that pull you into the lives of the characters with an emotional tug that holds long after you close the book. With a few deft words Kate Hanson creates characters like 80 year-old Bailey who laces up the old lady shoes 'she had sworn up and down she'd never own' and borrows her neighbor, Lester's truck, gets a lesson on driving and goes off to rescue her lifelong friend from the prison of an old folk's home. Another character, Annalee copes with despression and loneliness by befriending a boy and his mother who are on the run from the boy's abusive father. Humor and poignancy mix in the story of a wedding interrupted for the funeral of Miss Boo, a horse which was the last present given the bride by her father before he died in Vietnam. These are wonderful stories full of characters you'd be pleased to meet any day of the week and told with wit and compassion in a style reminscent of Flannery O'Connor and Lee Smith.

Cleaning out a bookshelf recently, I found this book. As the snow fell outside, I discovered exquisite writing, characters instantly opened to the reader, intensely felt. The stories, full of detail to just the right degree, still unfold as smooth as cream. The pain of loneliness, illness, abandonment, death coming unfairly to the young, pulls the reader into remembrance, yet there's a hope and nobility and innocence to it all. This is an author of great talent. Reading this is a privilege.

Wow...she really gets to the heart....and she has visual images that stick with you for a while...this was a great read!