LAST CALL

A remarkably accomplished first collection covers 32 years in the life of a fragmented West Texas family.

The first four stories (“Easter Weekend,” “Nature’s Way,” “Gone” and “Thrumming”) unfold during a few months in 1958. Laura, 14, has an older sister who has recently eloped; an older brother, and two younger brothers. Her father is away for days at a time working in Amarillo, and her mother is restless in a way only Laura seems to notice. The two family dogs, Fay Wray and her daughter Greta, provide some of the more vivid images, particularly when Greta runs off and comes back badly wounded, then gives birth to a litter: Still wild from her own damage, she shreds them with her teeth. Within weeks, Laura’s mother runs off, leaving her children without a backward glance. The rest of the volume follows the damaged siblings as they grow older and have children of their own. The exquisite title story is told from the point of view of older sister Gloria’s son Travis, who works with her at a bar called the Blue Moon after her husband and other son have been killed in a car wreck and her daughter is pregnant with a girl who dies at birth. Travis is both tender and tough as he struggles to protect his mother with wisdom beyond his years. In a stunning feat of telescoping, Cook gives us some later years of estrangement and final reconciliation in a matter of a few heartbreaking paragraphs. A few stories (“Texas Moon,” “Knock Down, Drag Out”) descend into macho country-western sentimentality about men who have lost women through abuse and want them back. But, mostly, Cook is subtle as he illuminates the fragile connections between men and women.

A family’s tragic trajectory viewed through the kaleidoscope of time in stories that make an immensely satisfying whole. Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.