San Francisco-based author and Rumpus columnist Peter Orner is the mind behind such works as The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, and Love and Shame and Love. Now Esther Stories, his acclaimed debut collection of short stories, is available in a rereleased edition by Little Brown with a new foreword by Marilynne Robinson.
The discovery of a murdered man in a bathrobe by the side of a road, the destruction of a town’s historic City Hall building, and the recollection of a cruel wartime decision are equally affecting in Orner’s vivid and intimate gaze. The first half of the book concerns the lives of unrelated strangers across the American landscape, and the second introduces two very different Jewish families, one on the East Coast, the other in the Midwest. Yet Orner’s real territory is memory, and this book of wide-ranging and innovative stories remains an important and unique contribution to the art of the American short story.
Learn more about the novel here.
