Lesser Mountains

by Andrew Geyer

The voices of these characters are raw and real, and they cry out to be heard. The interwoven stories in Lesser Mountains delve into the lives of the fictional people living in and around the small town of Jordan, Texas, in much the same way Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kittredge does for those living in Crosby, Maine. Texas settings, common themes, shared imagery, and intertwined plots combine to reveal the life arcs of everyday folks who find themselves displaced by the passing of the rural Southwest Texas way of life. The protagonists for the major plotlines are introduced in the opening story, and the subsequent narratives link the trajectories of their lives in unexpected and fascinating ways--a novelistic effect that makes the whole much more than just the sum of its parts.

214 pages, Paperback

Published March 21, 2019

About the author

Andrew Geyer was born in Austin and grew up on a working cattle ranch in Southwest Texas. He lived in Austin again in the 80s and 90s, along with stints in Columbia, South Carolina; Tishomingo, Oklahoma; Lubbock, Texas; Russellville, Arkansas; and Aiken, South Carolina. Geyer has been—among other things—a bartender, a waiter, a busboy, a bellhop, a cashier, a landscaper, a construction worker, a manager at a Birkenstock store, a student, a teacher, and a writer. A lover of the outdoors and an avid runner and canoeist, Geyer has traveled extensively in North America, Central America, South America, Europe, and North Africa.

Andrew Geyer’s latest book is the hybrid story cycle Texas 5X5, a collection of twenty-five interconnected fictional narratives by five Texas writers that was published in 2014 by Stephen F. Austin University Press. His story “Fingers,” the opening piece in the collection, won the 2015 Spur Award for Best Short Fiction from the Western Writers of America. He is the co-editor of the composite anthology A Shared Voice, published by Lamar University Press in 2013. His individually authored books are Dixie Fish (2011), a novel; Siren Songs from the Heart of Austin (2010), a story cycle; Meeting the Dead (2007), a novel; and Whispers in Dust and Bone (2003), a story cycle that won the silver medal for short fiction in the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Awards and a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he currently serves as Professor and Chair of English at the University of South Carolina Aiken and as fiction editor for Concho River Review.

Reviews

[Aaron Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are stories in this that really sing. The prose style is really simple and powerful and there are characters that stick with you a lot.