IN THE SKY LORD

A collection of short stories featuring a cast of everyday Midwesterners.

In this new set of stories from longtime novelist Troy, ordinary folks are often put into situations that demand their most extraordinary selves. In “Rent to Kill,” Millie Kick opens a small business renting plants and soon meets Max Luck, a high school English teacher whose cancer takes a turn for the worse not long after she moves in with him. Millie finds herself caring for and saying goodbye to the man she loves while protecting him from his successful and incredibly self-absorbed mother. This same mother, the inventor of a doll that has “growing” hair, reappears in the title story about a woman named Belinda as an old friend of the protagonist’s sister. After taking in a young woman who, in turn, takes over her home (and credit line), Belinda begins seeing ghosts who hasten to remind her that she hasn’t been generous enough in her life. The undercurrents of personal grief and long-standing, interpersonal family strife are present in several of the stories here, including “The Golden Flapjack,” in which several characters in a diner—including the aptly named “Barbara Something”—are struggling with the deaths of family members and aggravated by Imogene, the hostess, who steals from a donation jar honoring someone who died of leukemia. Troy’s stories are not the type to rip through intensely plotted narratives; they are slow-burns in which readers will find themselves moved by ostensibly mundane turns in life. The author displays her gift for finding small details that reveal volumes about her characters: “She used to wear a clothespin on her nose so it would grow straight…she used to hang on playground bars to make herself taller. She said she came from a family of knuckle crackers. She said Clair’s boyfriend wasn’t antisocial, not a survivalist or anything moronic like that.” These stories have the heft of real life, and readers will carry these characters with them.

A moving collection of literary fiction.