Red Ant House

Denis Johnson meets Flannery OConnor in this luminous collection of short stories about the collision of cultures genders and generations in the American Southwest. Set mainly amid Indian reservations and uranium mills these twelve stories create a kaleidoscopic view of family myth love landscape and loss in a place where infinite skies and endless roads suggest a world of possibility yet dreams are deceiving like an oasis just beyond reach. Whether its a young woman pushed quite literally to the edge on a desolate mountain pass an orphaned brother and sister trying to patch together an existence one stitch at a time a cop who suspects his kleptomaniac wife is stealing from other people materially and emotionally or a wily roadside hypnotist whose alleged power is both wonderful and strange Ann Cumminss characters want to transcend the circumstances of their lives to believe in the eventuality of change. Again and again Ann Cummins generates imagery of white-hot intensity and pushes the limits of both the human spirit and the short story form. Gritty seductive and always daring this unforgettable collection puts forth a haunting new vision of hope and heartache in contemporary America and confirms the arrival of an important new voice.