Six Months in the Midwest by Darci Schummer
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In the dark heart of winter, a young boy struggles to understand his mother’s failing health as she teaches him Polish, the language of her dead mother. From a distance, a frustrated English professor dines with her mentally ill ex-husband in a park on which a mansion once stood. A single mother struggles to let go as her teenage son seeks his independence. A drag queen and his partner battle a snow storm while debating the future of their relationship. A retired garbage collector finds solace in the ballet, and the owner of a liquor store tries to find companionship on the streets and in the bars of Minneapolis. Equal parts bitterness and beauty, the sixteen stories in this collection are plotted snapshots of a city in its most unforgiving season
Characters come together in this collaborative short story collection. Dealing with life choices, quirky behavior, and an array of emotions, Six Months in the Midwest is a stand out collection from author Darci Schummer.
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Genre: Fiction/Short Stories
ISBN:978-0692242001
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Reviews"This is one of the most emotionally intense collections of short stories I have ever read. Sometimes I had to fight through tears to keep reading stories like "Chemistry," which is just a crushing piece about realizing too late what it takes to hold a relationship together. The characters in all of these stories are in tough positions. Relationships falling apart. Loved ones lost. Hope fading or already gone. More often than not, the result of their own actions or inaction. But these people still push forward, through bleak Minnesota winters.
Speaking of Minnesota, the setting is as much a character in these stories as the people. Minneapolis and St. Paul are unforgiving, or maybe just ambivalent. Or sometimes, they offer refuge, the only refuge when hope is fading so fast. That's not to say there aren't glimmers of hope. "The Garbage Collector," one of the standouts, along with "Nobody Moves in Winter" and others, find characters discovering something positive to hold onto, if only for a fleeting moment. The prose in this collection is impeccable, but it's a tough book. It's the kind of book you aren't going to be able to read straight through. It's the kind of book that you'll have to put down every story or two and just catch your breath and pull yourself together before you can move forward. And when you do get to the last page, you're never likely to forget this reading experience." -MP Johnson "Here are characters that breathe, that live. It's almost startling how few pages Schummer requires to evoke the histories of these characters, even if said histories sit teaming under outwardly ordinary surfaces. Betrayals, anxieties, small acts of kindness sit hunched together in the pages, fueling small but profound events. Each story as much a meditation on being human as it is on the snow that falls through lamplight on a Minneapolis winter night -- the city becoming its own aching character. You become tied into these characters -- so beautifully, painstakingly written -- you begin to see small parts of yourself in them: each mistake made, every word uttered, every tire track through slush. Let's face it, we need more literature that evokes the confusion of our lives, of the horrible, beautiful mess. And here it is."
-Tanner Servoss "From the first line,"After a late summer storm, Minneapolis was in a state of mild ache" Darci Schummer captures the essence of the Midwestern city. The author brings to the reader a myriad of people and their "small" yet unfailingly real stories. Often under a suffocating low winter's sky, Schummer brings us closer to understanding those we pass by but rarely see. Highly recommend this author's first book"
-Whalegale "Simply put, these stories are emotive. The characters are written in a way that makes you feel like you could easily switch lives with them.
Having recently moved to Central New York from Minneapolis, this book is like having a little piece of home with me. I can picture the neighborhoods and locations as I'm reading. For the first time since leaving, I feel homesick, maybe even missing the Midwest winters." -Amy |
About the author
Darci Dawn Schummer, a Wisconsin girl, is the eighth daughter of a firstborn son. She started writing at the age of nine but never really called herself a writer until she attended the University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire where she filled beat up Meads with stories and poems. In 2005, she moved to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area to attend Hamline University's MFA program.
During her time at Hamline, she sailed around city streets on city busses, often finding her characters sitting in the seats ahead of or behind her. She wrote madly--assembling and disassembling stories until she understood how they worked. Since graduating from Hamline, she has published several pieces of short fiction in places such as Paper Darts, Twin Cities Run Off, The Diverse Arts Project, Feile-Festa, Conclave: A Journal of Character, Vita.mn, Everyday Fiction, Revolver Magazine, and Midwestern Gothic. Also, her work has been anthologized in Lyrotica, Rattlesnake Valley Sampler, The Cancer Poetry Project, and Open to Interpretation: Intimate Landscape. She has been interviewed by The Missouri Review as part of its Working Writers Series and was a guest blogger for both Battered Suitcase Press and CaringBridge.org. Additionally, in 2013, she was part of the University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire's Blugold Visiting Writers Series. In 2014, her first collection of stories, Six Months in the Midwest, was published by Unsolicited Press. Currently, she teaches English full-time at Hennepin Technical College and lives in an old Minneapolis upper with her books and records and dresses. You can visit her at www.darcischummer.com. "I thoroughly enjoyed Six Months in the Midwest. Be prepared to meet all kinds of people, all ages of people. Schummer is able to bring people to life on the page, people she apparently has observed and started thinking about imaginatively. Every story, except one, I believe, is in 3rd person. I especially enjoyed "The Parade"; "The Garbage Collector"; "Apron On, Apron Off"; "Nobody Moves in Winter"; and "The In-Between Girl." But they're all involving and definitely worth reading."
-Pearl "Ever wonder who all these people walking around your city are? You'll get to know many of them up close and personal in this consistently moving and intelligent collection of short stories. My favorite is Pretty as a Penny, which explores personal boundaries, social statuses and Sex World in compelling fashion. Be careful biting into Darci Schummer's stories, because sometimes they bite back."
-Shale N. |