Under the Wheat

by Rick DeMarinis

This anthology includes the title story about a dissolving marriage and an obsessive love affair that symbolizes the uneasiness and fear resulting from missile installations in North Dakota farmland

Genres: Fiction

157 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Rick DeMarinis (1934-) is an American novelist and short-story writer.

Reviews

[Jeff Jones]

Under the Wheat - missile silo inspector has an affair
Good Wars - coming-of-age story of a boy
The Smile of a Turtle - door-to-door salesman convinces a housewife to buy his door peephole, then to let him in; creepy ending
Weeds - a farm kid watches everything die around him due to pesticides
Life Between Meals - large eater converts girls to eat with him, dumps them when they refuse the life, finds another
Blind Euchre - rich woman bored with her life goes on a paraglide ride over her party below
Billy Ducks Among the Pharaohs - adolescent boy goes to work for a gypsy-like man who teaches him photography and sells housewives photos of their kids; reworked for the novel The Burning Women of Far Cry.

Overall, elliptical entrances to his stories that catch people in their natural element. We learn their lives, their particular predicaments along the way.
Neon moments, piecemeal gems, encased in authentic life--the reader works to link them.
DeMarinis exposes the character of a particular California.

[Kim Zinkowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Some great short stories - gems!

[Lynne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Among the stories were some gems, but when he veers into the surreal he fails to engage any interest.

[Tom Hooker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read it, but I don't remember it.