Blue River and Red Earth

by Stephen Henighan

These eleven short stories cover a wide range of territory - from Toronto to Cuba to Eastern Europe. And, wide-ranging over geography as they are, they also cover an array of characters and situations that can only be situated in the twenty-first century.

240 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2018

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only understood why these stories didn't seem to mesh together when I reached the end of the book: many of them had been published previously in literary journals and magazines. Blue River and Red Earth does not bear the same cohesiveness as other short story collections I have read. This tome is simply a sampling of Stephen Henighan's work. And while that work may be good in some places, mashed together like this results in a terrible travel nightmare where the author slings us around from country to country with the hope that somewhere we'll snatch up some semblance of a through-theme... in the end, I think I would have liked these stories in isolation. But when a publisher endeavours to create a collection, they had been be a collection and not a broken mosaic.

[Kate Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doreen and her family lend a concrete presence to these stories of youth, romance and intellectual exploration. No wonder Philip is drawn to her.

[Kim Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last half of the book is five stories about an interracial couple--she's a Jamaican-Canadian, he's a white Canadian--and they're about the best, most honest, most uncomfortable stories I've ever read about how race sinks into people's daily lives--especially liberal people who try to ignore race. I'll remember Doreen and Phillip for a long time. There's also a really moving story about a woman who works with refugees who's dying of cancer. She stays kind of outrageous right to the end. I also really liked the one about the Russian girl scientist and there's a long one about war in Guatemala that has a strange love story in it. This is a wonderful collection!