Featuring . . . Vanishing and Other Stories by Deborah Willis

This Friday and every Friday for the next several months I'll be featuring a book in the Harper Perennial Imprint. Some were recently published, some will be released later this year, all are worth a closer look.

I used to think I just wasn't a short story kind of gal. But then I started exploring collections that focused on themes that I find hard to resist. Deborah Willis's Vanishing and Other Stories is just such a collection.

Take a look at the publisher's summary:

A French teacher who collects fiancés; a fortune-teller who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter; an aging cowboy seduced by a city girl . . . these are some of the unforgettable people who live in these pages.

In Vanishing and Other Stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents, and children. With wisdom and dexterity, moments of dark humor, and a remarkable economy of words, Deborah Willis captures an incredible array of characters that linger in the imagination and prove that nothing is ever truly forgotten.

One of the linking themes to Willis's stories is the idea that some people stay and others leave, and she explores the personalities, reactions, and lives of those who are left behind. I am taken with Willis's ability to create stories told from a diverse group of characters: from children, young adults, and the mature; from city people and country people; from males and females.

Willis can tell you much about a family in just a few sentences:

We were raised on lentils, brown rice, Neil Young, and solstice celebrations. Our mother ran a local grocery co-op and wore skirts made of hemp before hemp was chic. Our dad was a ceramics artist who sold cups and bowls at the local farmers' market, had lost most of his short-term memory, and never got any of the big commissions that the tourist board gave out.

As young children, Claudia and I were encouraged to be wild. We were always outside, and often naked. The neighbors complained because our parents never mowed the lawn, believing that children should have high grass to play in and dandelion seeds to blow. (p. 266)

See what I mean? I'm not the only one to notice Willis's ability to capture her readers:

• Nely from All About {n} says: "[T]he narrators all seemed true, someone you might know, or even a few of their aspects might be found within you. "
• Staci from Life in the Thumb says: "I was amazed at how eloquently Willis could tell a story in such a short amount of words and pages."
• Dawn reviewing at 5 Minutes for Books says: "Willis has a masterful command of words–beautifully constructed phrases and sentences kept popping out at me, wanting to be remembered."

To learn more about Deborah Willis, visit her website.

This book was featured as part of my Spotlight on the Harper Perennial imprint. For information about the imprint, please read Erica Barmash's welcome note posted here on June 18, 2010. I encourage you to add your reviews of Harper Perennial books to the review link-up page; it's a great way to discover Good Books for Cool People. See the alphabetized review index to see what others are saying. And don't miss the The Olive Reader, the Harper Perennial blog.

Vanishing and Other Stories at an Indie

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Published by HarperCollins / Harper Perennial, September 2010
ISBN-13: 9780062007520