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Fires of Our Choosing
Eugene Cross captures much of his generation's fears and excitements with a collection of realistic stories that borders on darkness at times. His is a voice combining humor and pathos with an edginess creating fresh new stories that are being published in great literary journals regularly.
A boy acts out at the death of his father and abandonment by his brother through a savage playground beating; a young man confronts his own troubled history when asked to hire on his girlfriend's strung-out brother in an attempt to keep him out of prison; a teenage babysitter works through a scorching-hot summer afternoon that will prove to alter her life forever; a grieving widower finds comfort in the unlikeliest of places, a recently-built casino; an itinerant farm worker visits the same former lover in South Dakota year after year while following the Harvest north; two friends search for excuses and fail to claim responsibility for their own decisions after one loses his father, and the other's house burns to the ground; and a taxidermist falls in love with the ex-wife of his high school bully and tries to convince her to marry him despite her son who seems to share his father's bullying mentality.
"A brilliant, sometimes heartbreaking debut by this gifted young writer and Columbia writing teacher. Cross captures the angst and tenderness of the young men and women growing up in the rust belt with little hope and less luck. The moments of grace and redemption shine through. I loved every story." —Linda Bubon, Women & Children First Bookstore
"There are countless moments like this in Fires of Our Choosing , lines that appear true from the moment they’ve been written and hang in the back of the mind for days afterwards... With Fires of Our Choosing , Cross climbs boldly into the ring with the greats, if only to deliver a decisive knockout punch." —Urban Waite, Fiction Writers Review
"Cross offers no apologies for his their poor choices, their lack of moral fortitude, their betrayals of each other and the poverty of their surroundings and, often, themselves; he leaves these things alone. They are who they are, and if dignity has been denied them by the rest of us, including us story-tellers, it is restored by this collection. That he has undertaken to serve as their raconteur should place Cross on the radar of all the big prizes that gift those blessed with talent, compassion and fearlessness, particularly during this present moment in our history." —Ru Freeman, Huffington Post
Eugene Cross was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania and received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. His stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine (which named him one of "20 Best New Writers" and his story "Harvester's" a "Top Five Story of 2009-2010"), American Short Fiction , Story Quarterly , TriQuarterly , and Callalloo among other publications. His work was also listed among the 2010 Best American Short Stories' 100 Distinguished Stories. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Chautauqua Writers' Festival, and the winner of the 2009 Dzanc Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community Service. He currently lives in Chicago where he teaches in the Fiction Department at Columbia College Chicago.
A boy acts out at the death of his father and abandonment by his brother through a savage playground beating; a young man confronts his own troubled history when asked to hire on his girlfriend's strung-out brother in an attempt to keep him out of prison; a teenage babysitter works through a scorching-hot summer afternoon that will prove to alter her life forever; a grieving widower finds comfort in the unlikeliest of places, a recently-built casino; an itinerant farm worker visits the same former lover in South Dakota year after year while following the Harvest north; two friends search for excuses and fail to claim responsibility for their own decisions after one loses his father, and the other's house burns to the ground; and a taxidermist falls in love with the ex-wife of his high school bully and tries to convince her to marry him despite her son who seems to share his father's bullying mentality.
"A brilliant, sometimes heartbreaking debut by this gifted young writer and Columbia writing teacher. Cross captures the angst and tenderness of the young men and women growing up in the rust belt with little hope and less luck. The moments of grace and redemption shine through. I loved every story." —Linda Bubon, Women & Children First Bookstore
"There are countless moments like this in Fires of Our Choosing , lines that appear true from the moment they’ve been written and hang in the back of the mind for days afterwards... With Fires of Our Choosing , Cross climbs boldly into the ring with the greats, if only to deliver a decisive knockout punch." —Urban Waite, Fiction Writers Review
"Cross offers no apologies for his their poor choices, their lack of moral fortitude, their betrayals of each other and the poverty of their surroundings and, often, themselves; he leaves these things alone. They are who they are, and if dignity has been denied them by the rest of us, including us story-tellers, it is restored by this collection. That he has undertaken to serve as their raconteur should place Cross on the radar of all the big prizes that gift those blessed with talent, compassion and fearlessness, particularly during this present moment in our history." —Ru Freeman, Huffington Post
Eugene Cross was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania and received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. His stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine (which named him one of "20 Best New Writers" and his story "Harvester's" a "Top Five Story of 2009-2010"), American Short Fiction , Story Quarterly , TriQuarterly , and Callalloo among other publications. His work was also listed among the 2010 Best American Short Stories' 100 Distinguished Stories. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Chautauqua Writers' Festival, and the winner of the 2009 Dzanc Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community Service. He currently lives in Chicago where he teaches in the Fiction Department at Columbia College Chicago.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
170 pages, Paperback
First published March 13, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
July 9, 2012
I hadn't heard of Eugene Cross' affecting and well-written short story collection, Fires of Our Choosing, until an author I follow on the Goodreads website recommended it. I'm really glad I pay attention to those recommendations, because otherwise I would have missed out on a collection I'm still thinking about a few days after completing it.
The characters in Cross' stories are all dealing with some type of struggle. Whether it's a young boy so overcome with rage at his brother leaving following the tragic death of their father that he severely beats up another classmate, a widower who finds a renewed sense of excitement by visiting a casino about an hour from the retirement community he lives in, a teenage babysitter just on the verge of college whose routine babysitting job has bigger ramifications than she is aware of, or the middle-aged man locked in a battle of wills with his girlfriend's son, whose temperament is all too similar to the boy's father, who used to beat the narrator up when they were in high school, each story has its main character facing a test of emotional (or sometimes physical) strength. Some of my favorite stories in the collection included "Rosaleen, If You Know What I Mean," "Only the Strong Will Survive," "Come August," "The Brother," and "The Gambler."
If I have any criticism about the collection, it's that I felt that some of the stories ended just before something key was going to happen, but the stories didn't leave you in suspense wondering what that something was, I just felt disappointed. Luckily those instances were outweighed by some powerful, fully fleshed out stories that affected me. Eugene Cross is a tremendously talented writer, and I hope this collection is just the start of a terrific career in fiction. I'll be watching.
The characters in Cross' stories are all dealing with some type of struggle. Whether it's a young boy so overcome with rage at his brother leaving following the tragic death of their father that he severely beats up another classmate, a widower who finds a renewed sense of excitement by visiting a casino about an hour from the retirement community he lives in, a teenage babysitter just on the verge of college whose routine babysitting job has bigger ramifications than she is aware of, or the middle-aged man locked in a battle of wills with his girlfriend's son, whose temperament is all too similar to the boy's father, who used to beat the narrator up when they were in high school, each story has its main character facing a test of emotional (or sometimes physical) strength. Some of my favorite stories in the collection included "Rosaleen, If You Know What I Mean," "Only the Strong Will Survive," "Come August," "The Brother," and "The Gambler."
If I have any criticism about the collection, it's that I felt that some of the stories ended just before something key was going to happen, but the stories didn't leave you in suspense wondering what that something was, I just felt disappointed. Luckily those instances were outweighed by some powerful, fully fleshed out stories that affected me. Eugene Cross is a tremendously talented writer, and I hope this collection is just the start of a terrific career in fiction. I'll be watching.
March 8, 2013
Fantastic. A theme of loneliness and abandonment runs throughout, but it's written with such compassion that you're left feeling connected with each story. I left this book feeling, "I think I get it..."
May 16, 2012
Cross’s book does not disappoint. A combination of Phillip Meyer’s American Rust and Denis Johnson’s Jesus’s Son, Fires maps the lives of working-class men and women who often find themselves a dice-throw away from being down-and-out, problems with love, family, and alcohol complicating perpetual crisis of the wallet and the heart.
Stories by Ron Rash and Bonnie Jo Campbell, who often cover similar, bleak ground, can act as a series of downward strokes when collected, which can be exhausting to read, but Cross’s stories are more varied, and Fires largely avoids this. Some of the most effective stories are the ones where Cross leaves behind the familiar and branches into different voices. “Rosaleen, if You Know What I Mean,” which chronicles a boy’s failed rebellion in the face of his dissolving family, and “Come August,” a brief story told as a second-person address that tells of a babysitter who finds her life irrevocably changed when she steals a few moments of sleep, are two of the most arresting stories in the collection.
Opening “Eyes Closed,” the story of a two-bit pool hustler hoping to pay rent with a big score, Cross writes that “Bars and pool halls were not places you went to turn your luck.” His characters know this, yet these are the places they are drawn to, where their luck changes momentarily before inevitably running out. These are the places in Erie, Pennsylvania, that Cross brings to life so well, the places his characters might find dignity and grace in the incremental victories gained against life’s uphill struggle.
Stories by Ron Rash and Bonnie Jo Campbell, who often cover similar, bleak ground, can act as a series of downward strokes when collected, which can be exhausting to read, but Cross’s stories are more varied, and Fires largely avoids this. Some of the most effective stories are the ones where Cross leaves behind the familiar and branches into different voices. “Rosaleen, if You Know What I Mean,” which chronicles a boy’s failed rebellion in the face of his dissolving family, and “Come August,” a brief story told as a second-person address that tells of a babysitter who finds her life irrevocably changed when she steals a few moments of sleep, are two of the most arresting stories in the collection.
Opening “Eyes Closed,” the story of a two-bit pool hustler hoping to pay rent with a big score, Cross writes that “Bars and pool halls were not places you went to turn your luck.” His characters know this, yet these are the places they are drawn to, where their luck changes momentarily before inevitably running out. These are the places in Erie, Pennsylvania, that Cross brings to life so well, the places his characters might find dignity and grace in the incremental victories gained against life’s uphill struggle.
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June 27, 2013This is one of the most magnificent story collections I've read in a long time. Cross dissects moments with laser precision. His characters' dilemmas are recognizable but heightened to a point of complete drama. You really must read this.
March 16, 2015
Lighting the First Match
Review: Fires of Our Choosing
by Phil Cole
With most of Eugen's stories taking place in his home-region of up-state Pennsylvania, his characters and their predicaments are very much tied to their surroundings. Much emotional energy is drawn around this through looks exchanged at bonfires, cold nights spent in lonely dive bars, and romances beginning and ending at a peninsula reaching into Lake Erie.
Cross seems to like baiting the reader into projection. In many of his stories, you are nestled into a seemingly clean and simply-sequenced narrative only for your expectations to be shattered by some kind of unforeseeable event. In “Come August,” Megan, the protagonist, is preoccupied with boy problems and anticipation of going away to college for the first time. While babysitting her half sister and a neighborhood girl, Megan briefly falls asleep. When she wakes up, her concerns—which the reader has not only invested his or her self in, but also anticipates an outcome from—disintegrate when she finds the two girls have drowned in the pond in her back yard. This transition in the plot gives the reader a violent jerk from the relative comfort of melodrama to the all-too-real panic of death. We are then, through our own past acts of similar negligence, left to take on Megan’s guilt. By doing this, we are finally brought to grant forgiveness through a pragmatic sympathy that Cross adeptly puts into us like a spell.
Megan isn’t the only bait for projection in Fires of our Choosing. Cross constructs another trap in a sixth grade boy in “Rosaleen, If You Know What I Mean.” In it, Marty brutally beats a boy up at school and, after being expelled, is forced to take anger management classes and eventually give an apology to the boy he assaulted. As you are instantly tempted to hate Marty, you progressively gain more empathy for him as he is left alone by his distant mother, fleeting brother, and father who has died the year before. We get to see the broken state of him and his mother’s relationship from their dinners spent “in front of the TV with the sound turned low, Vanna White floating back and forth across the screen as though observing them” and their sparse interaction that was “anchored only by those times when she had to drop Marty off at school or pick him up.”
As the story goes on, Cross reveals Marty’s act of violence as not so much an act of heartless sadism, but a confused and desperate attempt to feel recognition or significance. Whole-heartedly, Cross manages to make us look at ourselves through Marty—forcing us to reevaluate the character of at least one person whom we may have damned for such actions as his.
This book shines at its best with Cross’s keen understanding of life-disappointment in the story, “Hunters.” In it, he writes of the defeated wives of bar frequenters who quietly get out of bed to pick their husbands up at closing time:
"There were rarely any women at Hunters, except for the wives of a few husbands at closing. These were women who stood in the doorway silently, hair mussed from sleep, long winter coats held shut over fraying nightgowns. Their faces were aged with the stoic acceptance of their lots, and they would wait until their husbands finished the drinks they had in front of them, unseated themselves clumsily from their stools, and collected their change and cigarettes from the bar."
There is an acute level of perception that makes this conveyance so powerful. Perhaps it’s in Cross’s sensitivity: he is moved and rattled by the things most people keep only in the corners of their eyes and the back of their minds. We see these women picking up their husbands, shopping for their groceries and sitting home all alone on Saturday nights in front of televisions all the time, but they seem to slip between the cracks of our concerns. Cross, however, highlights their gloom with an honest air of sympathy and consideration that shines brightly in his writing.
Fires of Our Choosing demonstrates Eugene Cross’s more inviting understanding of the human experience: one that embraces and humanizes those souls who so often get lost in this world’s confusing grid of morality and unforgiving histories of our decisions. If this success of a debut speaks for what is to come from Eugene Cross, it might be useful to remember his name now.
Review: Fires of Our Choosing
by Phil Cole
With most of Eugen's stories taking place in his home-region of up-state Pennsylvania, his characters and their predicaments are very much tied to their surroundings. Much emotional energy is drawn around this through looks exchanged at bonfires, cold nights spent in lonely dive bars, and romances beginning and ending at a peninsula reaching into Lake Erie.
Cross seems to like baiting the reader into projection. In many of his stories, you are nestled into a seemingly clean and simply-sequenced narrative only for your expectations to be shattered by some kind of unforeseeable event. In “Come August,” Megan, the protagonist, is preoccupied with boy problems and anticipation of going away to college for the first time. While babysitting her half sister and a neighborhood girl, Megan briefly falls asleep. When she wakes up, her concerns—which the reader has not only invested his or her self in, but also anticipates an outcome from—disintegrate when she finds the two girls have drowned in the pond in her back yard. This transition in the plot gives the reader a violent jerk from the relative comfort of melodrama to the all-too-real panic of death. We are then, through our own past acts of similar negligence, left to take on Megan’s guilt. By doing this, we are finally brought to grant forgiveness through a pragmatic sympathy that Cross adeptly puts into us like a spell.
Megan isn’t the only bait for projection in Fires of our Choosing. Cross constructs another trap in a sixth grade boy in “Rosaleen, If You Know What I Mean.” In it, Marty brutally beats a boy up at school and, after being expelled, is forced to take anger management classes and eventually give an apology to the boy he assaulted. As you are instantly tempted to hate Marty, you progressively gain more empathy for him as he is left alone by his distant mother, fleeting brother, and father who has died the year before. We get to see the broken state of him and his mother’s relationship from their dinners spent “in front of the TV with the sound turned low, Vanna White floating back and forth across the screen as though observing them” and their sparse interaction that was “anchored only by those times when she had to drop Marty off at school or pick him up.”
As the story goes on, Cross reveals Marty’s act of violence as not so much an act of heartless sadism, but a confused and desperate attempt to feel recognition or significance. Whole-heartedly, Cross manages to make us look at ourselves through Marty—forcing us to reevaluate the character of at least one person whom we may have damned for such actions as his.
This book shines at its best with Cross’s keen understanding of life-disappointment in the story, “Hunters.” In it, he writes of the defeated wives of bar frequenters who quietly get out of bed to pick their husbands up at closing time:
"There were rarely any women at Hunters, except for the wives of a few husbands at closing. These were women who stood in the doorway silently, hair mussed from sleep, long winter coats held shut over fraying nightgowns. Their faces were aged with the stoic acceptance of their lots, and they would wait until their husbands finished the drinks they had in front of them, unseated themselves clumsily from their stools, and collected their change and cigarettes from the bar."
There is an acute level of perception that makes this conveyance so powerful. Perhaps it’s in Cross’s sensitivity: he is moved and rattled by the things most people keep only in the corners of their eyes and the back of their minds. We see these women picking up their husbands, shopping for their groceries and sitting home all alone on Saturday nights in front of televisions all the time, but they seem to slip between the cracks of our concerns. Cross, however, highlights their gloom with an honest air of sympathy and consideration that shines brightly in his writing.
Fires of Our Choosing demonstrates Eugene Cross’s more inviting understanding of the human experience: one that embraces and humanizes those souls who so often get lost in this world’s confusing grid of morality and unforgiving histories of our decisions. If this success of a debut speaks for what is to come from Eugene Cross, it might be useful to remember his name now.
March 10, 2013
Fires of Our Choosing is a collection of short stories by Eugene Cross. The stories are very real and emotional, and his writing is interesting and engaging.
I had to read the collection because he’s coming to my college next week, but of course I’m in class while he’s performing. Go figure. I’m a little pissed that I can’t see him, because I really did like a majority of the stories. Some of them were a little dull, and I think one I read without retaining anything, but a lot of them I really loved.
My favorite story was the one about the babysitter in the summer. It’s in second person, which I love, and the ending was so shocking and awful. I really loved it, and it was very emotional. Cross clearly knows what he’s doing with second person, which is impressive.
I’d definitely recommend this collection to anyone who likes contemporary short stories. They were interesting and funny, and I loved reading the collection.
I had to read the collection because he’s coming to my college next week, but of course I’m in class while he’s performing. Go figure. I’m a little pissed that I can’t see him, because I really did like a majority of the stories. Some of them were a little dull, and I think one I read without retaining anything, but a lot of them I really loved.
My favorite story was the one about the babysitter in the summer. It’s in second person, which I love, and the ending was so shocking and awful. I really loved it, and it was very emotional. Cross clearly knows what he’s doing with second person, which is impressive.
I’d definitely recommend this collection to anyone who likes contemporary short stories. They were interesting and funny, and I loved reading the collection.
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May 17, 2012"Rosaleen," "The Brother," and "Fires..." stand out to me. "Fires..." for doubling Dogtooth's ending within a week of watching Dogtooth. I do not want to be anywhere near a trunk or truck bed. The story's arc and twist and end in pleasing ways, revealing truths about the hard place of Eerie and being on the edge of something there, maintaining an element of surprise without straining credibility ("Fires..." and "Rosaleen" slip into violence in ways that are discomforting in how it is just what is next and not something that tears up the fabric of the story). In terms of micro stuff, a lot of the writing has a kind of unobtrusive transparency to it. Even the stories in 1st. The stories are rooted in place but for some reason I want to the diction to locate them more firmly in the opposite poles of time (present and archetypical). Would I read more? Fuck yes.
October 3, 2012
Eugene Cross is a master of the short story and a terrific writer. These stories are dark -- some (Come August, for example) are downright painful. The unifying theme seems to be the pivotal moment that probably won't end well. Cross gives us just enough back story to show that the outcomes of big moments are usually determined by lots of smaller inattentive ones. Some of the most unlikely characters are the most appealing (Ronny the henpecked taxidermist, Harold the gambler who finally places a bet). What I liked best is the way Cross presents these fringe-y characters without apology. He might be asking for compassion, but not forgiveness.
January 25, 2013
Cross has a noir feel to his prose along with a seemingly natural ability to evoke emotion in his readers. You feel for the characters. You love them, hate them, cry with them, relate to them. Of course, I had my favorite stories, but there wasn't one story (not one!) that I finished feeling disappointed. Quite the opposite. I'd recommend this collection of short stories again and again.
April 5, 2013
I read this book while I was in line at AWP for 5 hours at registration, so perhaps that brought it down a star. It's really cool how many of the stories in this collection start AFTER the traumatic event that affects its characters' lives but end before some upcoming result or decision. In this way, they inhabit an interesting in-between space.
April 9, 2013
Really impressive book of short stories, each one a surprise. This has become my benchmark: I'll know one of my stories is finished when it reads as well as Eugene Cross (which, I'm afraid, may be never--but it's a worthy goal!)
April 28, 2012
Strong debut - pretty much everything I want out of a story collection. I look forward to whatever Cross does next.
May 22, 2012
A magnificent collection of short stories! Eugene Cross is a most prolific author, "Fires of Our Choosing" is a thoroughly enjoyable read and I look forward to his future works.
May 31, 2012
It's no secret that I want to be Eugene Cross when I grow up. These stories are part of the reason why.
June 5, 2013
Solid collection of intriguing, often heartbreaking, literary short stories.
February 7, 2016
Had to read this book for a class but I really loved it. The stories in this book really move you and I never wanted these stories to end.
August 10, 2013
It's been a superb year for short-story collections and "Fires of Our Choosing" swaggers confidently among the ranks of collections by titans like George Saunders and Karen Russell. Midwestern style with a bottle of Railbender in hand and your girlfriend's Dear John letter balled up in a back pocket. These are not surreal stories but tales of driving home in the fog along 430 with a woman you can no longer please riding shotgun beside you. But not with you. The loneliness of once-a-year trysts for a seasonal worker on the Great Plains and the woman he always leaves behind. Would you bet your life savings on a spirited horse named Iowa Alice? You'd best order another Railbender. The next time, make sure you remember the color of your lover's eyes.
August 8, 2012
WHOA! Very rarely do I listen to the advice of my "book snob" friends, but enough of them were raving endlessly about Eugene Cross and his debut book that I decided to see if the accolades were worth it... and, boy, they were dead on. Eugene Cross may be the new kid on the literary block, but it looks like he's found fertile ground and he won't be moving any time soon. He's a talent to keep an eye on.
"Fires of Our Choosing" is a fantastic collection of stories with a ton of heart, passion and genuine character. Don't pass it up.
3 stories to thumb to immediately: "Rosaleen, If You Know What I mean." "The Brother." "Only the Strong Will Survive."
"Fires of Our Choosing" is a fantastic collection of stories with a ton of heart, passion and genuine character. Don't pass it up.
3 stories to thumb to immediately: "Rosaleen, If You Know What I mean." "The Brother." "Only the Strong Will Survive."
January 3, 2013
Enjoyed it. Reviewed it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ru-free...
June 1, 2025
I read the whole collection in two days and while I have to say I mostly preferred the first half of stories to the second, this was an excellent collection that really made me feel things surrounding loss, violence, and heartbreak. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5. It only lost half a point to me because there were a couple in a row that all ended very similarly/before the story had really finished, in my eyes at least.
October 8, 2013
Recommended to all! Review of this collection coming soon!
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews