Last Call: Stories
  • Published:
    Oct-2013
  • Formats:
    Print / eBook
  • Main Genre:
    Literary
  • Pages:
    270
  • Purchase:
  • Share:
K. L. Cook's debut collection of linked stories spans three generations in the life of one West Texas family. Events both tender and tragic lead to a strange and lovely vision of a world stitched together in tenuous ways as the characters struggle to make sense of their lives amid the shifting boundaries of marriage, family, class, and culture.
A series of unusual incidents -- a daughter's elopement, a sobering holiday trip, a vicious attack by the family dog, a lightning strike -- provokes a mother of five to abandon her children. An oil rigger, inspired by sun-induced hallucinations, rescues his estranged wife, who doesn't appreciate his chivalry. In the wake of his father's and brother's deaths, a teenage boy finds a precarious solace working with his mother at a country-western bar. A cosmetics salesman schemes to buy Costa Rica and flirts dangerously with mobsters in Las Vegas. A woman fleeing her fourth marriage arrives at a complicated understanding of love and responsibility.

Railroad worker and conman, grieving son and battered wife -- these characters explore the limits of family fragility and resilience. Their stories -- suggesting unlikely connections between comedy and pathos, cruelty and generosity -- promise a hard-won dignity and hope.
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EDITIONS
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    • First Edition
    • Oct-2013
    • Bison Books
    • Trade Paperback
    • ISBN: 0803271719
    • ISBN13: 9780803271715
    •  
    • Oct-2004
    • U of Nebraska Press
    • eBook
    • ISBN: 1496209400
    • ISBN13: 9781496209405
    •  
    • Jul-2022
    • University of Nebraska Press
    • eBook (Kindle)



View the Complete K.L. Cook Book List