A Twilight Reel: Stories

by Michael Amos Cody

Each of the twelve stories in A twilight Reel chronicles a transformation-loss, self-discovery, renewal-among the inhabitants of the fictional town of Runion, NC.

A preacher held at knifepoint in a stranger's cabin, another who absconds with his church's funds and the wife of a parishioner; an elderly woman who slowly goes mad as she freezes to death; a renowned fiddler who returns home to die of AIDS; a gravedigger more comfortable with the dead than the living ...

Sinful or righteous, imbued with hope or beyond redemption, each of these memorable characters struggles to endure, survive, or triumph over unplanned encounters with the people, forgotten or remembered, admired or scorned, who beset their lives.

These narrative threads are masterfully woven into the tapestry that is A Twilight Reel-a book full of surprises, dark fears, and unexpected humor, that echoes and distills the travails of any people, in any place.

Genres: Short Stories

312 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2021

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spend a year with the residents of Runion, North Carolina, as they experience the joys and sorrows that make up a lifetime. For some folks the year brings new beginnings, while others come face to face with their sad, sad endings

Weather permitting, I savored the stories, only one at a time, outdoors at the close of day. Good stuff to read while the fireflies begin their rise from the cool grass - a sight that still holds me in awe, though one that also stirs morbid thoughts of how many more years I'll be around to see them in their nightly dance.

And, yeah - that's just the kind of feelings this gentleman's fine writing engenders. It brings a tear to your eye and makes you sigh deeply.

Ah, life . . .

[Michael Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

A TWILIGHT REEL was some 25 years in the making. Three of the stories were written for my MA at Western Carolina back in 1995 (the early versions of "The Wine of Astonishment," "Overwinter," and "Grist for the Mill"). Another four were written around PhD studies, associate prof / Tenure & Promotion / full prof hoops ("The Flutist," "The Invisible World around Them," "A Poster of Marilyn Monroe," and "Two Floors above the Dead"). The remaining five were written in the past 3-4 years ("The Loves of Misty Sprinkle," "Decoration Day," "Conversion," "A Fiddle and a Twilight Reel," and "Witness Tree").

I find it interesting that the first story written for the collection--"The Wine of Astonishment," set in January--is the first story in the lineup, and the last story written--"Witness Tree," set in December--is the last story in this order determined not by chronology of composition but by the calendar months.

Is Runion, North Carolina, a real place? Well, yes and no. It was a real place in the early years of the 20th century. The town was built around a sawmill, and when the sawmill closed near the beginning of the Great Depression, Runion soon after became a ghost town. Little remains of it today beyond some concrete foundations of homes and the mill buildings, the mill's concrete paymaster's vault, and concrete works related to the transport of lumber, pre- and post-production. A TWILIGHT REEL reimagines Runion in its historical place, at the confluence of the Laurel and the French Broad, and invests it with characteristics of Marshall, Mars Hill, and Hot Springs, with a little bit of UNCA thrown in as well.

[Bill Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

12 months. 12 stories. Seemingly ordinary people with far from ordinary stories. A touch of Twain, Wilde, and O. Henry woven through a year's worth of tales from the denizens of the fictional town of Runion, NC.

With "The Wine of Astonishment," this anthology kicks off with an Edgar Allan Poe flavored story of temptation and desperation involving the preacher of a community church, a mystery woman, and a madman. The ending does not disappoint.

Other stories address infidelity, regret, hope, prejudice, tolerance, and compassion, running the gamut of human emotions. And what short story compilation would be complete without a tale where Marilyn Monroe is a central figure?

Michael Cody continues the prosaic brilliance displayed in his novel "Gabriel's Songbook" that provokes the reader into rapidly turning pages out of pure enjoyment fueled by the anticipation of what is to come with each passing page.

[Whiskey Leavins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fictional town of Runion, North Carolina is a stone’s throw and a world away from the big city of Asheville. It is also the setting for all twelve stories that comprise Michael Amos Cody’s new book, A Twilight Reel. At the risk of being accused of hyperbole, this book is a tour de force. The setting is vivid and real. The characters are fleshed out and compelling. And the fact that they, and their concerns, are introduced in one story only to resurface in later ones, make A Twilight Reel read as much like a novel as a short story collection. I’ve seen it compared in more than one place to The Dubliners, with good cause.

The real accomplishment here, though, is Mr. Cody’s remarkable ability to capture the complexity of the south in general, but the Appalachian region in particular. An old world increasingly finding itself overrun by modernity is at the heart of the book. Areas of tension abound. Town folk look cross-ways at the University folk, many of whom commute in from Asheville. There is a compelling look at what happens in an old, conservative community when a local church is converted to a mosque. One of the most striking tensions is the community’s grappling with the realization that gay people actually exist and are undeniably in their midst. And although set in 1999, it is timely enough to call into sharp relief the seemingly unbridgeable divisions we currently live with in American society. And it does this without going anywhere near a soap box. Several books have been recommended to me by conservative friends since 2016 to help me “understand.” None have come close to this book in terms of providing a relatable, believable, fleshed out, functioning world in which these divisions are explored. BIG caveat here: I do not in any way believe that Michael Amos Cody set out to make a political statement. I would hate to saddle such a terrific piece of writing with such low intent. The author sets out to capture the place and people where he grew up. That’s what he’s done and that’s what makes it so effective.

If your main understanding of Appalachia comes from the TV show Justified and you wonder what life was like for folks other than Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder, this book will flesh that out for you vividly and in depth. Turns out there were folks sitting on porches snacking on raw, salted potato slices. There was a grown man who drove hours to buy a Marylin Monroe poster so as to keep it on the down low. But there were also Academics and music majors at the local University. A Twilight Reel introduces us to all these people and more.

If like me, your experience with contemporary Appalachian fiction is limited, A Twilight Reel is a great place to start.

[Harley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many have already pointed out the defining characteristics of this collection, and while I wholeheartedly agree with the wonderful sense of Appalachia and Cody's good-sense creation of realistic characters, a thriving now-ghost town, and the interconnectedness between, there were two smaller things that I found myself focusing on while I read.

1) Cody has a knack for the small moments where he turns something we frequently overlook in our own lives into something deep and rich and celebratory. (He also does in this debut novel GABRIEL'S SONGBOOK, which I also highly recommend.) For some non-spoilered examples, "The Wine of Astonishment", shows us a deep moment of everyday intimacy at the beginning, and "The Loves of Misty Sprinkle" remind us of all those things--small and large alike--that we hold close. Many of these snapshots have celebratory elements of life, though, especially of the Appalachian slice. The culture is poignant in these stories.

2) Cody also has this surprisingly great sense of horror and tension. I didn't expect to read things that gave me a deep sense of unease and the occasional hair-rise on the arms, but I think Cody gives us a really good sense of the fear that comes from both emotional and physical bits of ourselves. I'd say the most notable stories with this kind of tension is the latter half of cold sweat in "The Wine of Astonishment", the undercurrents of violence in "A Fiddler and a Twilight Reel", and the realistic boiling-over of "Grist for the Mill."

Overall, it's a really solid collection, and I think the snapshots feel a bit like turning the pages of a family album. I highly recommend sitting down and spending some time on the front porch with these stories. :)

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Twilight Reel is a short story collection whose specificity of place and time put me in mind of, yes, Joyce and Faulkner, but also Alice Munro and Elena Ferrante -- writers whose work is so stamped with the imprint of a region and culture that I feel like I've been to those places, and not as a tourist but as a full-fledged member of the community. In the case of A Twilight Reel, I have *actually* been to that place -- not the fictional Runion itself, of course, but Southern Appalachia on the cusp of the twenty-first century. These stories are a potent and vivid series of snapshots of that time, and of how the citizens of Runion grapple with trepidation about the future in a place entrenched in and sometimes consumed by the past, and the fear of being swallowed up by a world rapidly getting bigger.

My favorites stories in the collection are "Grist for the Mill," where the oppressive heat of August simmers and finally boils over on a Runion street in a burst of violence and breaking taboos; "A Fiddler and a Twilight Reel", the savagery of which viscerally captures the fear of AIDS in Appalachia that I remember from the 90s, tempered here by a transcendent moment of music and defiance; and the opus "Decoration Day", where past and present intertwine and haunt each other, centered on that most fitting of setpieces, the Memorial Day gathering in the graveyard that, for some reason, we're big fans of in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. All twelve stories are well worth your time, though -- and experiencing them as a year in Runion, as a tapestry of a community in flux, is a must.

[Mark Chesshir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Talk about bringing characters, scenery, hopes, fears, tears, love and desires to life, Michael Cody has a way that allows your imagination to be inside the settings. A fabulous collection of stories that brought an outsider into the life of those in Runion.

[Bobby Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up in SW Virginia, a descendant of German, Irish, and Dutch settlers who mixed with the local Cherokee. My earliest recollections of the term Appalachia were the news sound bites about poverty, opioids, regional obesity and cancer rates, poor education etc. At an impressionable age I developed a resentment for growing up in the “boonies” somehow less than my peers in cities or less rural places. As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned just how wrong the cultural assumptions about Appalachia are. We are not a monolith. We are unable to be lumped into a single category or culture, but are a multitude of voices. My recurring thought while reading A Twilight Reel : Stories was that the people in Runion are human, that their condition, their emotion, their fears and hopes are just like anyone else’s. Yet something about these mountains, and the struggle here and maybe even the generational trauma of civil war and poverty and cultural tension all bring that human-ness closer to a boil and nearer the surface. I can’t say enough about Michael Amos Cody’s ability to capture the way Appalachian people think and talk and convey that to the page honestly without judgement. You are able to sympathize with even the worst characters as they bend toward their own demons. I felt like the ties that bind Runion together are the universal strings that connect all of us only that here they are more pronounced, louder like bowed strings on a fiddle in the silence of the valley separated from the orchestra, resonating off of witness trees, the ground, valley and mountains. I feel haunted, I feel human, but most of all I feel grateful that despite all it’s imperfections I too am from this mystical place. I left these stories wanting more, also feeling like I read a history of actual people and an actual place, everything was eerily familiar, nearly deja vu. I’ll be buying more books by Michael Amos Cody, and I can’t wait to go back home to Runion.

[Robert Battistini · Rating 5 out of 5]

_A Twilight Reel_ belongs to a rare, wonderful breed: undeniably “literary” fiction that still reads like a guilty pleasure. These stories would be lauded in an MFA workshop—but you should also give the book to your cousin who hates to read! Much has been said about the book’s refined virtues, and I’ll add some more. But let the reader first know that Cody has so exquisitely described a place, that its particularity becomes a portal to wherever you are; has birthed compelling characters you badly miss when you finish the book; and has crafted narratives that drive the reader through even the most meticulous literary craftmanship.
Cody has a particular gift for contrapuntal assemblage of disparate elements—people, places, eras. In the superb novella at the center of the book, “Decoration Day,” Cody moves among Civil War re-enactors at a Park Service ceremony, a simultaneous church-sponsored cemetery observance, and the Civil War events that inspired the contemporary events—in particular, the ghastly Shelton Laurel Massacre. In bringing together so many characters and perspectives, Cody dramatizes his character’s observation that “these mountains were a mess of allegiances,” and begins to explain the *how* and *why* of that messiness. In “The Invisible World Around Them,” the cancer-wasted body of an exemplar of Appalachian masculinity parallels an AIDS-ravaged local man who returns home to die. In a later story, that man wakes to find a burning cross on his front lawn, but Cody’s technique has already elicited the reader’s compassion for Mike Fredericks. As Faulkner would have it, in Cody’s stories the past isn’t ‘even past,’ and characters (and readers) ignore it at their own peril--or at least befuddlement.
One of the delights of the collection is Cody’s attention to women’s voices, concerns, and spaces. Five of the twelve stories are entirely or partially from the perspective of women: we spend time in kitchens, front porches, and hair salons (as well as faculty offices and church pews). Happily, Cody writes with none of the clotted pretension that allegedly characterizes academic prose, but his portrayals of university politics and life are devastatingly precise. And as befits a writer so attentive to history and time, Cody is remarkable in his sympathetic but unflinching portrayals of ageing and diseased bodies.
This is surely a collection of stories for readers interested in understanding contemporary Appalachia. But Cody’s fictional town of Runion, North Carolina is no more restrictive to his vision than Hawthorne’s Salem or even Balzac’s Paris were to them. These stories are, as Paine wrote of _Common Sense_, “the concern of every [person] to whom nature hath given the power of feeling.”

[David Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Twilight Reel: Stories by Michael Amos Cody (Pisgah Press 2021) (813) (3711).

Well, well! It’s about time I ran across the writing of Michael Amos Cody, for I am a brand new fan. I love me some “Grit Lit,” and Cody’s work compares favorably to that of one of my very favorite authors, the brilliant Ron Rash. Rash’s writing mines the fertile ground of Madison County, North Carolina, in which Cody’s A Twilight Reel: Stories is set.

Though A Twilight Reel appears to be a collection of unrelated short stories, readers quickly learn that the characters in these stories are bound by the common thread of location. Madison County is a huge piece of backwoods terrain. It is essentially a tangle of dense mountain wilderness on the North Carolina - Tennessee border. Much of Madison County’s territory is far off the beaten track and is still primitive - as is a portion of the populace. Certain sections of Madison County are still unwelcoming (if not downright hostile) to outsiders (I’m looking at you, Shelton Laurel and Sodom Laurel). There is a good reason that the county has been known since the nineteenth century as “Bloody Madison.”

As a Madison County native, Michael Amos Cody knows his chosen subject matter well. I spent several years in Madison County’s college town of Mars Hill, and I believe that I recognized a number of the sites Cody chose for these tales, which he fictionalized as Runion, North Carolina.

These are great stories. Cody is an engaging writer and a fine storyteller with a sharp ear for dialogue.

I purchased a new PB copy on Amazon for $19.61 on 6/27/21.

My rating: 7.75/10, finished 1/3/23 (3711).

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[Gene Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very enjoyable read. From a character's simple appreciation of a beverage to their strong memories which modify their current behaviors, Cody seamlessly marries the internal and external lives of these townsfolk. You enter their world and consciousness as individuals and feel them enter the varied interrelationships of small town life. The reach of the area's history shows its continuing influence in each chapter, whether from ancestral deeds and misdeeds or from the meaning of the Civil War itself.
Highly recommended.

[Sharon Barnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have finally (late in life) discovered the joy of reading! Twilight Reel was a great read and I felt after finishing each story that I wanted to KNOW MORE about what happens in the life of Cody's characters! I liked the mention of characters from his novel, Gabriel's Songbook, which was another very enjoyable read!

[KELLY A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, smart, with an eye of compassion for the assorted folx living in the small but changing small town of Southern Appalachia.

[Zoë Hester · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Twilight Reel reminds us of the connections, both expected and unlikely, that exist among people. Michael Amos Cody carefully quilts together the lives of those living in and passing through small town Appalachia, reminding us that it is often impossible to completely know the secrets, intentions, and stories of those who surround us, even though our lives are intertwined.

[Abby N Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got the great opportunity to talk with Cody about his book. Here's a look at the beginning of the interview:

Abby N. Lewis: I’m here today with Michael Amos Cody, who teaches in the Department of Literature and Language at East Tennessee State University. He grew up in Madison County, North Carolina, and lives with his wife, Leesa, in Jonesboro, Tennessee. He previously wrote about Runion, which is featured in his new short story collection A Twilight Reel, in his first novel, which came out in 2017, titled Gabriel’s Songbook. So, each of the twelve stories in A Twilight Reel—your new short story collection, which comes out on May 25, 2021—every story represents a month in a year, with “The Wine of Astonishment” being the first story set in January 1999 and “Witness Tree” as the final story set in December of 1999. What influenced your decision to order the stories in this way?

Michael Amos Cody: Well, my initial thoughts when writing always tend to be about place and trying to realize a sense of place, how to create it. Be that the rural setting of sort of small town Runion and its environs, or whether it’s an urban setting like Nashville, which was the setting in a lot of Gabriel’s Songbook. I try to get a physical picture of the place in my mind so that readers can kind of enter the world, I hope, and physically sense it. You know, they can they can smell it, they can feel its textures and hear the sounds and such. That’s where it starts.

Continue reading: http://box5887.temp.domains/~blackmy8...

Or watch the full interview: http://box5887.temp.domains/~blackmy8...