Michael Gills – författare

The House across from the Deaf School, Michael Gills’ third collection of short fiction, continues the life and times of Joey Harvell, whose stepfather, in “Last Words on Lonoke,” gives him a .30-06, tells him not to aim at anything he doesn’t want to kill, and “that’s pretty much it for [his] gun safety lessons.”  Later, in “What The Newly Dead Don’t Know But Learn,” his uncle swims Joey and a group of fake cowboys across a creek on Camp Robinson, only a fisherman’s trotline is stretched across the S-curve, and the result, like the book as a whole, is a hard fight there’s no recovering from. What others have said about Gills' work: "Each word is a spark, every sentence a sizzling fuse.  The whole...is a sun-white conflagration, cleanly and cleansing.  Michael Gills sojourned in the heart of light and he has returned to his home world with that light still cling to his ever utterance.."—Fred Chappell "Michael Gills' prose reeks with accuracy and bulls-eye intensity..."—William Harrison "These stories are, scene by scene, sentence by sentence, beautifully written--clean, gorgeous prose, perfectly pitched.  The detail work is exquisite.  Suffering and loss are given their necessary place in these stories, but so too are grace and mercy.”—Donald Hays

True to its name, Burning Down My Father’s House, comes at you like a house on fire. Michael Gills’s fourth collection of short fiction continues the saga of Joey Harvell, who’s from a people prone to impromptu fistfights on the sides of southern highways, where they drive semis hauling dead whales floating in beds of formaldehyde, after all, “this was the Dixie Circuit–it was nothing for a Peterbilt to pull off the interstate with a six-hundred-pound rat, two-headed goats or Donkey Woman nursing horsey-faced twins.” Murderous and grace-infused, these stories incinerate the family trials and tribulations that collect and go on collecting until they stack floor to ceiling under the carports of our lives. What’s left after the great conflagration is a matter of the heart, how we love, even when it’s impossible.

"Have you ever wanted to run away from it all to some dusty little town, change your name to Wanda and wait tables while your life changes chapters? Have you ever felt the need to leave the wife behind, hop a train or hitch a ride and seek out the California sun? Have you ever come home to her clothes gone, her keys, her cat and nothing left there but a hint of her perfume? We''ve all had those times where we''ve dreamed it, planned it, lived it. This collection of short stories addresses every variation of running away, wanting to run away, and trying to run away"--

Before All Who Have Ever Seen This Disappear, Michael Gills’ fifth novel, plumbs the depths of the Stepwell family tendency toward theatrical catastrophe. When Weldon Stepwell, bare-knuckled catcher for the Danville Little Johns and town florist, has his leg amputated in a wood-cutting accident, the team shows up on the hospital lawn to give blood, pray, and curse God. Mostly they gather to be with the stricken wife, daughter, and son and wait to see if their teammate will live through the night. One teammate is sent to retrieve the leg, and just what on earth do you do with such a thing? Rural Arkansas in 1950, they are men who’d just whipped Hitler and come home to play ball, volunteer firemen, rural mail carriers, the stray senator-to-be, hardware store workers, and fish farmers. Spanning three generations, they just can’t seem to outrun whatever it is that stalks their periphery. Finally, an adult grandson must contend with the Stepwell business in the form of a plague that comes on them and the world from nowhere. Quarantined between a gleaming football stadium on one side of the road and the city cemetery on the other, a moment comes when they must walk out under the sun and re-commune. A story that dives as deep as you like into the abyss, then fights its way out with all the hope and grace this life allows.