Floods and Fires - by Dan Leach (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Floods and Fires, the first collection of stories by Dan Leach, tests Marilynne Robinson's assertion that "Families will not be broken." In the title story, a father harbors his fugitive son from the town bully-turned-sheriff and meditates on suffering in small-towns. In "Everything Must Go," an estranged husband spots his ex-wife's belongings at a garage sale and grapples with an onset of paranoia. In "Transportation," a young boy attempts, through wild acts of imagination, to transcend his bleak existence in a trailer park. Wrestling against limitations that are Southern in aesthetic, but universal in nature, the characters in Floods and Fires seek redemption in the face of hard times. Quirky, outlandish, but in the end emotionally poignant, Dan Leach's stories follow imperfect people struggling against their circumstances, their histories, and, most importantly, themselves.

Review Quotes

Dan Leach's beautifully-written, soul-shaking collection proves without a doubt that the best stories in America emerge from the universe of literary magazines. Each protagonist in Floods and Fires stands at a point when one simple decision needs to be made immediately, and chances are that the decision might backfire. These are stories of Love and Disaster--though not disastrous Love. Fans of Larry Brown, get in line pronto.

-George Singleton, author of Calloustown

In the vein of Ron Rash and the late Larry Brown, Floods and Fires is peopled with characters backed into corners, grasping for salvation any way they can find it. You can't have grace without sin, and Dan Leach's exceptional story collection delivers plenty of both.

-Jon Sealy, author of The Whiskey Baron

Floods and Fires, Dan Leach's debut collection of stories, is populated with people living on the unheralded edges of society; people whose lives have taken a wrong turn down that gravel road (you know the road I'm talking about) on the outskirts of town; lives that will always fall, through self-destruction or just plain bad luck, short of the American Dream. But there is also a tenderness here-between parents and children, ex- and would-be lovers, spouses and friends-that lifts the stumbling and worn-down to uncomfortably recognizable light. In this gritty world one can see the influence of our contemporary southern masters-William Gay, Tom Franklin, Brad Watson-but the people who populate Leach's South Carolina are his own, as are the disappointing, sometimes cruel, lives they inhabit.

-Terry L. Kennedy, Editor, storySouth

Dan Leach is a new voice in American storytelling. His first volume of short stories mixes bittersweet humor and haunting tragedy but always relies on sharply-drawn characters whose ever-present experience of loss draws the reader in. This author's first collection is truly a delight to read.

-Randy Spencer, author of What The Body Knows

Dan Leach has carved his own path as a rollicking, darkly entertaining storyteller. In Flood and Fires, Leach finds himself rooted firmly in soil where stories rise from hard, broken lives like steam from potholes and ditches after a southern summer storm. Leach's prose summersaults off the page like Barry Hannah's. Like so many of us, these characters more clearly see the past than the future, and when they do move forward they're full of "stars and booze and brokenness." These backsliders know of grace, but not the humility to accept it. These characters recognize the hilly path of their lives, and we find our "foot presses the pedal until it can go down no further, and we tear into the darkness" and light with Leach.

-Cody Smith, editor of The Swamp, author of Delta Summers

In one of his stories, Dan Leach quotes Faulkner as saying 'all good stories were about people in conflict with themselves.'" In that way, he captures the essence of his debut collection, in which deeply flawed characters attempt to hold their families together and better themselves in the face of everyday temptations. Leach's extreme talent is evident from page one, and I can't wait to see more from this fresh new voice in Southern fiction.

-Erin Z. Bass, Deep South Magazine