Stories from The Road Not Taken

by Henry Hurt

The stories in this collection are set in and around the imaginary town of Shaw's Pond in Southside Virginia. The fictional players, including the narrator, are interrelated by bloodlines, marriages, secret loves, scandals and ancient grudges. As with people the world over, the characters and their stories are nourished by the legends that so often enrich the most ordinary of lives. To be sure, a lot is going on at Shaw's Pond. Henry Hurt has been an editor and writer for more than fifty years. As Editor-at-Large for Reader's Digest Magazine in its hey-day, he reported on events from espionage and terrorism to disasters--both natural and man-made. But his favorite subjects were the poignant stories of people where the human spirit shined through circumstances that seemed hopeless. Hurt lives in Southside Virginia.

152 pages, Paperback

Published August 19, 2016

Reviews

[Lori Berrios · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read of fictional stories of a small southern town. The author's vivid description of the people and place brings it to life and I found myself not being able to put it down. A great read that has you asking yourself how much truth is in the fiction.

[William Guerrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the words of Sam Cato Cobbett III, "what you see here is powerful evidence of the telling instinct."

There is an authenticity to the stories Henry Hurt tells of his fictional (but familiar) Southside Virginia community--an authenticity that is often missing in what passes for Southern writing. Mr. Hurt has pulled these stories (sometimes delightful, sometimes unsettling, sometimes both) from a place where place is more important than time--where past, present and future often blur together, a place occupied by characters whose presents are limited only by memory.

"One doesn't need to have been here in person to know what happened," Sam Cobbett V tells readers. "If you just stay quiet and listen, you can hear it all." Let us hope that Mr. Hurt, and others who have stayed quiet and listened, will continue to share stories like these from Shaw's Pond.

[Mad4books · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite quote: "...the voice of a newspaper should synthesize the seasons of a town's life from the time it started. Its pages, while still wet with ink, are reporting upon what instantly becomes the history of a place. Those pages, numbering into the thousands over the decades, become the final record of a town and its people. Such a repository of history is worthy of reverence."

WOW.

Preach on it, Brother Hurt.