In settings familiar and foreign, from the shores of the Great Lakes to rural Ireland and Scotland, the boulevards of nineteenth-century Paris, and an ancient Italian hill town, John Smolens’s stories delineate our fears, doubts, and uncertainties, tempered by irony, humor, and tenacity. The collection’s title, Possession(s), suggests an overarching duality that connects these fourteen disparate narratives, which include stories first published in magazines such as the North American Review, the Madison Review, and the Southern Review. In “prose that is an understated marvel” (Publishers Weekly) and through a wide range of compelling voices, each story resonates with compassion and honesty, often turning on unexpected encounters with a stranger, a place, the past, and sometimes with oneself, offset by a recognition that the future holds few assurances other than the promise of mortality. In their search for love, reconciliation, and acceptance, the characters in Possession(s) strive to find understanding and peace.
