Road of Five Churches
by Stephanie Dickinson

In this debut collection of short stories told in lush, humid prose the protagonists are all young women, many of them teens, trying to survive the extreme situation. There is Hatchet, accused by her Lakota brethren of being an FBI informer; Trout, a fundamentalist Christian with four children and another on the way; Kimchee, a Korean orphan; and Jasmina, imported from the Balkans for the sex trade. In “Fire Maidens, ’57,” Monarch helps her father sick from the radioactive “death dust” kill himself. This is the above ground atomic bomb testing Nevada of the 1950s. (Fish International Fiction Competition Third Prize Winner). “A Lynching in Stereoscope” is told in two first person accounts.

Ciz and Jelly weave an interlocking narrative of a woman lynched in 1930s Arkansas and a home health aide who discovers that the elderly brother and sister she’s caring for did more than witness the event as children, (selected by Dave Eggers for inclusion in Best American 2005 Nonrequired Reading Series). In the title story “Road of Five Churches,” two grifters, a mother and daughter who wander the south selling bogus vacuum sweepers, are revealed to be a grown missing toddler and the woman who abducted her (winner of 2003 Pearl Fiction Prize). “Amiga Mom from Planet Iraq” tells the homecoming of Sgt. Bethany Telecky, a disabled Iraq War Veteran, whose job was detonating bombs in a country wanting to “blow itself up into smaller and smaller bits of dirt and dust.” She loses her left arm and part of her face in an IED explosion (awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts 2006 Fellowship in Fiction). An intense, lively read, often darkly humorous, these stories never fail to lyrically entertain.

Excerpt:
Amiga Mom From Planet Iraq

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STEPHANIE DICKINSON's work appears in Cream City Review, Mudfish, Green Mountains Review, Chelsea, Nimrod, PMS, Storyquarterly, Feminist Studies, Inkwell, Ontario Review, Water Stone, Columbia Journal, and the McGuffin, among others.

She took first place in the 2003 Pearl Fiction contest for "The Road of Five Churches" and third place in the 2003 International Fish Competition for "Fire Maidens, '57." Her story "A Lynching in Stereoscope" appears in BEST AMERICAN 2005 NONREQUIRED READING edited by Dave Eggers. She received a distinguished story citation for "Chicken Bus Girl" in Pushcart Prize 2005, and in 2006 Best American Mystery Stories for "Slavequarters."

Her novel, Half Girl, won the Hackney Award for best unpublished novel of 2002. It will be published this year by Spuyten Duyvil.

Road of Five Churches - $14.00