Grace by Dan Burns
Chicago Arts Press, October 2019
195 pp
Available in 4 formats:
Ebook, paperback, harcover, and audible
Buy from the author
About the Book
“We’re all flawed and confronted daily
with sometimes slight but often apparently insurmountable challenges. But if we
dig deep, what we unearth from the depths of our souls, if we’re lucky, can
allow us to overcome and carry on to live another day with an untortured
heart.”
This is the sentiment Dan Burns explores
in his exciting new collection. Five stories and a novella highlight Burns’s
range as a storyteller and his ability to see life and all its emotions through
a unique lens. This collection features his most personal and insightful
stories to date.
Redemption—In a quiet Montana town, an
aging writer and his nephew are forced to weave the past and the present into a
future of more significant meaning.
The Plight of Maximus Octavius Reinhold—In
the new story featuring private investigator Sebastian Drake (from the
novel A Fine Line), the local patrons of a rural Wisconsin town test
Drake’s resolve as he stares into the barrel of a .44 Magnum revolver.
Hardwired—A dying man contemplates the
end of his life while hoping to pass along a secret legacy to his family.
Adrift at Sea—To fuel his creative
desires, a seabound journeyman leaves behind the anchor of distraction in
pursuit of a natural world.
The Final Countdown—In the year 2110,
the Earth struggles to survive, ravaged by overpopulation and greed. Food is
scarce, and the youth-run government has no choice but to implement a plan
devised decades earlier: deport the elderly population to a remote outpost—on
the moon.
Grace: A Novella—A story of impaired
love, betrayal, and redemption as realized by characters who experience life
through the perception of liquor-bottle glasses. Life is never what it seems.
Everyone has secrets. The question is whether the skeleton key of alcohol will
open the closet door and let out the hidden truths.
The collection includes notes about the
thoughts, ideas, and inspiration behind the stories, offering an exclusive
behind-the-scenes perspective of the author’s writing process, along with
twenty-six illustrations by artist Kelly Maryanski.
Enjoy the trailer
My
review
Burns’s new collection of stories is a
pleasant and poignant read, with a delightful flow from peaceful and magnanimity
to evocative to noir. My favorite story, Final Countdown, channels our mutually
admired author, Ray Bradbury. Simple pencil drawings add an extra level of revelation
in each story.
Beginning with a past meets present tale
set on a Montana ranch, family relationships tying youth and age, love and
lust, is the thread woven throughout the book.
Burns proves his versatility with genre,
moving adeptly along western, gunslinger, detective noir, old man and the
sea-type plots, futuristic, and his specialty of stage writing with ease. The
first story features a tenderness of two-way grace when a lonely old man gets a
surprise visit from his nephew in need. By the time we get to the last short
story before we reach the centerpiece, the novella of the title, we have
traversed through time and geography to a future glut of septuagenarians. In
Grace: a novella, the reader is drawn back around to reconsider family through
the eyes of a bitter wife and her sometimes humorous attempt to deal with her perceived
problems.
The cover is an intriguing tumble of
letters over the ghostly image of hands and face reaching out, or perhaps
breaking through. Readers who enjoy shorter slices of story dealing with the
challenges of family secrets, family love and war, and family adrift, will
enjoy this book.
About
the Author
Dan Burns's new story collection is
Grace: Stories and a Novella. He is the author of the novels A Fine Line and
Recalled to Life and the short story collection No Turning Back: Stories. He is
also an award-winning writer of stories for the screen and stage. He resides
with his family in Illinois and enjoys spending time in Wisconsin and Montana,
where he stalks endless rivers in pursuit of trout and a career as a fly
fisherman. www.danburnsauthor.com
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