In this collection of stories Percival Everett writes about men working with horses, fly fishing, dealing with the world and dealing with being black in a mostly white world.

“The Fix” is the parable-like story of a man who can fix anything, which leads to performing a miracle, which becomes his undoing. A clever patient escapes a mental institution. A black hydrologist finds himself both welcome and unwelcome in a dying mining town. “True Romance” had me thinking I was reading a Thomas McGuane story.

A black man in South Carolina starts a movement that inadvertently, or not, co-opts the meaning of the confederate flag. A semi-wayward son dies and his body disappears. Two men transport a huge drunk man and a horse scared of the dark – at night.

A fine group of stories by a writer who is also a master novelist. ( )

Damn fine stories, each one equally believable and implausible. ( )

Read "Appropriation of Cultures" and then write Everett a fan letter. ( )

Read "Appropriation of Cultures" and then write Everett a fan letter. ( )

Short story collection featuring African-American, Latino, and Native American protagonists. A little magical realism (the opening story is about a guy who can fix anything, where “anything” keeps getting a wider definition), but mostly just slices of life. As usual, venturing beyond f/sf left me cold, though I was interested in “The Appropriation of Cultures,” featuring an African-American man who starts playing “Dixie” without irony and showing the Confederate flag and telling everyone he’s doing it to promote black power, with great success. ( )