RED STICK MEN

A refreshing—at times inspirational—debut collection about hard-working people trying to do the right thing.

Parrish’s Red Stick Men are blue-collar folk living along the lower Mississippi. Their lives are buffeted by high water, high winds, and the ups and downs of the oil industry. (“Red Stick” is a nickname for Baton Rouge, referring to a bloodstained tree used by Indians as a tribal boundary.) “It Pours” is a charming coming-of-age story about a preteen named Jeb, who learns about his father’s strengths and weaknesses as flood waters creep up their street. In “Complicity,” after being warned not to fight with the “confused” boy living next door, he becomes confused himself as the boy’s policeman father beats up his wife and blames it on “a nigra man.” Jeb learns even more about abuse and bigotry when a family of poor Cajuns moves into the neighborhood (“Bonnie Ledet”). In “Hardware Man,” Jeb’s older brother Bob, after a series of failed jobs, is working for seven bucks an hour at Leenks hardware store when an explosion at the nearby refinery brings bitter memories of his mother’s death. In “Exterminator,” Bob, now fighting termites and cockroaches for a living, encounters an old flame who’s been roughed up by her new boyfriend. In “Free Fall,” a welder considers jumping to his death, while in “The Smell of a Car,” a foreman gets involved in the lives of total strangers when he witnesses the shotgun killing of a truck driver. “After the River” is a bizarre, Dali-esque story about Louisiana being washed away by the angry Mississippi.

Parrish covers a lot of ground—the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s; the wars in Vietnam, Panama, and the Persian Gulf; bigotry, violence, and the forces of nature—but at the heart of every story is the very familiar human need for love, respect, and understanding. Fine work.