Darcy Rhyno’s first collection of short stories was ten years in the making. It all started when he won first prize in the Chronicle Herald Short Story Contest for the first story he ever wrote, “Ragged Islands Burning.” Other stories won other awards and made their way into magazines, anthologies and onto radio. Withe the help of friends who served as encouraging critics and a creation grant from the Nova Scotia Arts Council, he completed the collection. Darcy Rhyno lives near Lockeport where the joy and pain of life on Nova Scotia’s South Shore serves as an endless source of inspiration for his fiction.

“Darcy Rhyno’s stories eloquently evoke the experience of growing up within the narrow confines of a South Shore fishing village, where the only broad horizons are those of the eastern sea. Yet his characters manage to survive, to reach out to rebel, and even to grow. Spare and clean, these are impressively truthful stories.”

• : Naked: Ragged Islands Burning: Measuring Up: Dancing on the Jordan: Sugar and Spice: Charity Begins at Home: The Seduction: The Joker: Soft as Milk: The Great Hope: Conductor of Waves: Ants