THE HITCHHIKER AND OTHER TRUE STORIES
by Karl Hiltner
A debut collection of short stories examines characters who become unmoored by personal and historical circumstances.
Hiltner’s tales explore a cast of characters who are dispossessed in a variety of ways. The author grew up in Ohio but lived and worked for many years abroad, mainly in Germany and Hungary, and these locations come up often in his works. Many are set during the World War II era and afterward, following individual people and families divided by conflict; there are also detours to the American Midwest and, in one story, Africa. The works often employ detached first-person narrators who observe and report more than they actively participate in the stories’ events. Although geopolitics is a thematic element of many of these tales, they are not generally action-oriented, nor are they centered on specific battles or historical figures; rather, they follow everyday people who often recount personal tragedies as they try to pick up the pieces of their lives. In these stories, sons leave their parents (“The Missing Sheep of Coshocton County”) and husbands leave their wives (“Remember Me”); one tells of running a factory in a stable postwar economy (“The Open Window”) and another of a visit to the beach (“Crescent Beach”). At least three stories include a suicide, and very few of them convey any kind of optimism for the postwar future—or joy for the characters who are living through it. There are some outliers, though, such as “The Double Standard Bra,” which, in fewer than two pages, ponders double standards of sexuality.
The author’s clear research and sense of place supply the European stories with a sense of confidence and authenticity, and the thinly described narrators give many of them an eerie, cautionary quality. There are 22 stories here, and many are on the shorter side and use dialogue sparingly; as a result, some feel as though they might have benefited by more clearly expressing characters’ personalities and motives. Many seem to be on the cusp of poignancy, but abrupt ends or time skips undermine their significance. “Beneath the Balboa Tree of Guescheme” stands out as one of the most fully realized works. It follows Baptist missionaries in Africa who witness the genital mutilation of a group of young local girls, relaying their experiences in dialogue and diary entries. It does not, however, deeply examine the implications of missionaries visiting African countries, and it seems to exoticize Muslim African communities. Overall, Hiltner’s prose is utilitarian, and the strongest lines come from narrators’ internalization of their bleak circumstances and observations on how time shapes our perceptions of suffering: “Perhaps the passing of a generation would settle long ago questions….The important thing was so simple, like the sitting in an orchard, and the taste of a pilsner. Perhaps there was no freedom and there was no tether. Perhaps the one who is tied is free, and the one who is free is tethered.”An inspired, if uneven, dissection of the nebulousness of life after the upheaval of war.