Joe (36 page)

That winter the trees stood nearly barren of their leaves and the cold seemed to settle into the old log house deep in the woods. The old woman felt it seep into her bones. Each morning the floors seemed colder, each day it was harder to crank the truck. The boy piled wood for colder days to come. At odd times of the day they’d hear the faint honking, and they’d hurry out into the yard to see overhead, and far beyond the range of men’s guns the geese spread out over the sky in a distant brotherhood, the birds screaming to each other in happy voices for the bad weather they were leaving behind, the southlands always ahead of their wings, warm marshes and green plants beckoning them to their ancient primeval nesting lands.

They’d stand looking up until the geese diminished and fled crying out over the heavens and away into the smoking clouds, their voices dying slowly, one last note the only sound and proof of their passing, that and the final wink of motion that swallowed them up into the sky and the earth that met it and the pine trees always green and constant against the great blue wildness that lay forever beyond.

FAY

“Brown’s magic is to make the reader wonder at this plucky heroine, then care about and finally root for her as she winds toward the novel’s gripping conclusion. Spellbinding.” —
People
magazine

In this taut, seductive novel, seventeen-year-old femme fatale Fay Jones hitchhikes her way down Mississippi Highway 55, with just the clothes on her back, two dollars, and a pack of cigarettes, and leaves bodies and broken hearts in her wake.

Hardcover edition: ISBN 1-56512-168-6

FACING THE MUSIC

“Ten raw and strictly 100-proof stories make up one of the more exciting debuts of recent memory—fiction that’s gritty and genuine, and funny in a hard-luck way.” —
Kirkus Reviews

These ten stories confront, head-on, the dark side of the human condition.

Paperback edition: ISBN 1-56512-125-2

BILLY RAY’S FARM: Essays from a Place Called Tula

“In all these pieces, a simplicity of language lays bare Larry Brown’s way of looking at the world, loving, strong-hearted and unsentimental.” —
Portland Oregonian

In ten personal essays, one of today’s most heralded writers provides a bare bones-tour of the landscape and the people that have inspired and influenced his writing.

Hardcover edition: ISBN 1-56512-167-8