Driving Uncle Tom

by Shawn Stewart Ruff

During funeral services for his late wife, sixty-two-year-old former-chauffeur Tom Jackson must steer the most complex situation he's ever faced: consoling her volatile, grief-stricken protégé, a fourteen-year-old boy who is also Tom's flame. From After the Riots: Cincinnati Stories, an in-progress collection of short fiction by Shawn Stewart Ruff, award-winning author of the novels Finlater and Toss and Whirl and Pass. ©2013 Quote "Editions"

17 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 30, 2011

About the author

Lambda Literary Award winner Shawn Stewart Ruff is the author of the novels Days Running (2025), GJS II (2016), Toss and Whirl and Pass (2010), Finlater, and the novella One/10th (2013). He is also the editor of the landmark anthology Go the Way Your Blood Beats (1996).

FYI: Cliffy Douglas, the young star of Finlater, gets a long-anticipated encore in Days Running, Ruff's most recent novel, published by DOPAMINE BOOKS in partnership with Semiotext(e) and MIT Press.

Reviews

[Furio · Rating 1 out of 5]

I never get the point of this kind of effort: well written but not well enough so as to be art prose; portraying situations not entirely realistic but entirely disagreeable, therefore providing no escapism without being exemplary snapshots of everyday life.
In the end they are just depressing. That is very much the case here.