The Trembling Field: Stories of Wonder, Possibilities, and Downright Craziness

In these sixteen unforgettable stories and essays, life unfolds in unpredictable ways, and the choices people make redefine their past and shape their future. Here gathered in one place is a full range of award-winning author and educator Carl Glickman’s creative work: parable, tragedy, humor, mystery, memoir, and personal essay. In this collection, clueless northern college kids desegregate schools in the rural South; a town attempts to come to terms with a revered community organizer’s pedophilic behavior; an old man copes with possible misunderstandings over what occurred with a promising female high school student; a child overcomes stuttering through the efforts of an unbending teacher; the mother superior of a Ukrainian convent is discovered to be the only child of a Holocaust survivor; and an African American man returns to the Georgia farmhouse of his childhood to wrestle with the death of his sister. And all the characters find themselves part of the wonder, possibility, and craziness that is life. “In my more than two decades of teaching, I have not met an aspiring writer who works harder. Carl reworks his stories until they sing.” —BK Loren, author of Theft and Animal, Mineral, Radical “Glickman’s stories suggest far larger worlds, complex and fraught with ambiguity. His stories exhibit a deep humanity, serious but with a certain delight about the world.” —Wayne Johnson, author of Deluge and Devil You Know