Horses All Over Hell

by Ryan Blacketter

Horses All Over Hell follows the twin tensions of Marty's drinking and Joanna's newfound religious sobriety--in a small Idaho city on the Snake in the early nineties. In ""Starlings,"" Marty and Aunt Darlene enter Joanna's bedroom with a sack of beer late at night, seeking to revive her old, drinking self. ""They Work at Night"" features Marty's escalating drinking. Also presented is Joanna's intense new friendship with an artist named Lucy. In ""Sending Those People Home,"" ten-year-old Cory laments that his mom isn't like the other church mothers. He keeps her best photographs under his bed. Despite this family's troubles, and whatever their fate, they ache for each other and make their own, often poignant gestures toward love. ""The eleven intricately woven short stories of Horses All Over Hell portray a family caught in an ever-deepening spiral of damage and despair while bound together by ties of love in a Western landscape that comes to life on the page. The deep flaws, the beauty, and the bravery of these richly imagined characters will linger with the reader long after the last page."" --Mary Clearman Blew, author of Jackalope Dreams and Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin, Professor emerita, University of Idaho ""With a forceful grasp of character and pitch-perfect dialogue, Ryan Blacketter brings us a deftly woven collection of stories about love and survival in a troubled, yet enduring, American family, reminding us that those who bring the greatest hardship may be the only ones left to offer shelter. Blacketter summons a world equal parts whiskey and evangelism, exhaustion and hope, charged with the curiosity and confusion of childhood, where loyalties are tested and rewarded, and too often broken. Horses All Over Hell is a heartbreaking and mesmerizing new book from a master of modern American fiction."" --Ernest Hilbert, author of Last One Out, book critic for Wall Street Journal and Washington Post ""Reading Horses All Over Hell I experienced a stark, poetic American realism in a manner I haven't in a long time. Blacketter's prose calls to mind Joan Didion, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, Flannery O'Connor, and Larry Brown, as he bluntly and beautifully lays out the saga of a family dealing with addiction and dogma."" --Christian Winn, author of Naked Me A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Ryan Blacketter is the author of the novel Down in the River. He has received a literary grant from Oregon Arts and Culture Council and a prison-teaching grant from the Idaho Humanities Council. He works as a mentor for PEN America's prison writing program. A Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee, he has read story manuscripts at Tin House and taught creative writing in Portland high schools through WITS.

136 pages, Paperback

Published July 3, 2019

About the author

"[Ryan] has a marvelous eye for the emotional textures of the most commonplace experience, the kind that familiarity makes almost subliminal."
--Marilynne Robinson

Reviews

[Ernest Hilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

With a forceful grasp of character and pitch-perfect dialogue, Ryan Blacketter brings us a deftly woven collection of stories about love and survival in a troubled, yet enduring, American family, reminding us that those who bring the greatest hardship may be the only ones left to offer shelter. Blacketter summons a world equal parts whiskey and evangelism, exhaustion and hope, charged with the curiosity and confusion of childhood, where loyalties are tested and rewarded, and too often broken. Horses All Over Hell is a heartbreaking and mesmerizing new book from a master of modern American fiction.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first became aware of Ryan from his excellent novel Down in the River, which is kind of like a cross between Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, and Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks.

Needless to say, I was very excited for his next release, which turned out to be a collection of short stories that reminded me a great deal of great writers, quintessentially American writers, such as Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, Jim Harrison, and Flannery O'Conner.

At the same time, it feels cheap to compare Ryan's prose to other writers. Ryan's prose is a product of his own lived in experience.

Ryan is clearly a fan of some of our finest American writers, and from reading him, I would argue that he deserves to stand among them.

[Terry Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of connected short stories drew me into the characters' heads. Takes empathy and awareness, a rare talent nowadays. Besides, can't get his phrase ""tv-stupid" (and others) out of my head!

[Hunter Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Horses All Over Hell’ addresses an American family in earnest; a gritty contention between connection and personal desperations. Blackletter pulls at a thread of heart in this book that, though resistant to exposure, finds relief in sunlight.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read! Love that all the short stories involved the sam characters, as though a progression of their lives & experiences. Would definitely recommend.

[Arthur O'Keefe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horses All Over Hell is a collection of eleven interlinked stories depicting a family in Idaho in the early 1990s. Events are seen through the eyes of Cory, the older of the two sons, as he tries to navigate his way through a childhood affected by an alcoholic semi-absentee father and a stridently religious, anxiety-stricken mother. These characters and their world feel very real as they muddle through the difficulties life throws at them, as well as those they create for themselves. Moving yet unsentimental and realistic, this is a finely crafted collection of stories.