Discoveries
This collection is set around Kent Nelson’s home territory in the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado, but, as in all Nelson’s collections, the characters and events are varied. In “Discoveries,” a man reads his girlfriend’s journal and is distressed not by what he finds out but by his own invasion of her privacy. In “A Way of Dying,” an old miner returns the gold he’s found back into the creek. In “Toward the Sun,” a marathoner’s girlfriend watches him run trails in preparation for a race, only to discover he’s training for another reason.
Nelson’s stories are unsettling and calming both. His prose is exact, and his knowledge of the human psyche enables him to create complexities in his characters’ experiences that are both simple and profound. Each story is a finely crafted gem, offering a glimpse into the inner workings of the human heart and mind.
“She kissed me quickly and got out, passed in front of the Jeep’s lone headlight still on from the rain, and got into Ruth’s Ford. She waved to me, and then she and Ruth were gone from the parking lot and were behind me up the street. I turned off the Jeep and sat a minute, looking at the gray sunlit facade of the church. I wondered what existed and what didn’t, and what I was going to do in the long winter ahead.”
Publisher: Western Reflections, 1998