The story itself belongs to narrator Samantha Peabody. Samantha Peabody, as she sometimes refers to herself, is an eighty-year-old bioacoustician, who has been living alone in the Pisgah for twelve years.

Russell convincingly conveys the gory conflicts, the injustice felt by Native Americans and their acts of retaliation, and the assault on Washita River, one of the bloodiest in frontier history, making A Forgotten Evil a compelling, moving story that will linger in the memory.

Not only does Schlich have fun with content, but he also beguiles the reader with playfulness in form. The main story line of “The Keener,” in which a silent orphan is drafted into a troupe of professional funeral mourners, alternates with versions of fairy tales about a banshee told by several characters.

In a world where buildings are attacked and then collapse seemingly out of nowhere, it is hard to know what we can know for sure.

Acutely amusing, cleverly twisted, thoughtful, and tender, When I Can’t Sleep is a formidable collection of short yet indelibly powerful flash-fiction yarns—the absurdly brilliant kind that never grow old and you never tire of reading.

All too often tropes in literature about the African-American experience are seen as representative of the affective “condition” of racial experience and travail, as in music for melancholy, vivid colors for ethnic life and violence, and so forth.

Sometimes these stories are laugh-out-loud funny in a way that doesn’t feel cheap or forced, but rather, completely fitting for Cashion’s characters.

Though the narrator seems to be an outside observer, the story feels intimate because we’re listening to her talk to herself. The last line is the most intimate of all, as it hints at the source of the deeper tension undergirding the chaotic scene.

This woman’s story, and others like it, pepper Wioletta’s narrative, enfolding a charming bildungsroman into the weight of history, tragedy, violence, and loss.