High Lonesome

A darkly comic, fiercely tragic, and strikingly original odyssey into contemporary American life by “the Jimi Hendrix of American short fiction” (Interview).

The thirteen masterful tales in this collection by the award-winning author of Airships and Bats Out of Hell explore lost moments in time with intensity, emotion, and an eye to the past. In “Uncle High Lonesome,” a young man recalls an uncle’s drinking binges and the rage unleashed, hinting at dark waters of distress. Fishing is transformed into a life-altering, almost mystical event in “A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis.” And in “Snerd and Niggero,” a deep friendship between two men is inspired by the loss of a woman they both loved. Viewed through memory and time’s distance, Barry Hannah’s characters are brightly illuminated figures from a lost time, whose occasionally bleak lives are still uncommonly true.

“Barry Hannah’s writing is raw and exhilarating, tortured, radiant, vicious, aggressive, funny, and streaked with rage, pain and bright poetic truth.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer on Airships