Indiana Winter - Paperback

by Susan S. Neville (Author)

"Neville's observations on inner and outer worlds deserve a large readership." --Studies in Short Fiction

"Blending fictional and reportorial technique, Ms. Neville unwinds a tapestry of the Indiana seasons . . . in scene after remarkable scene she succeeds in disturbing and undermining one's calm. . . . moving . . . " --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

" . . . shrewedly perceptive studies of the poetics of place . . . Neville pierces the heart of this 'heart of the country, ' unloosing disquieting images and poignant scenes that cling to your memory." --Belles Lettres

"If there is darkness in this vision there is also compassion, a lucid and inclusive civility born of remembering how fragile are the houses of our lives." --Arts Indiana

"A collection of essays, works of fiction and blends of those two genres, Indiana Winter is a poetic and disturbing interpretation of phenomena familiar to most of Neville's fellow Hoosiers--so familiar, in fact, that we may not really see them. . . . As a plunge into the blackness and glare of the examined life, Indiana Winter is a testament to courage." --Dan Carpenter, Indianapolis Star

"These stories and essays are filled with great emotion and affection for the people and the land we've come to know as the Hoosier state." --Minneapolis Star Tribune

" . . . a book that is firmly and honestly rooted in region, yet finds in its careful and lyrical examination of Indiana's people and places truths that move the prose pieces away from simple regionalism." --Sycamore Review

A sensitive writer's imaginative essay-stories about spiritual boundaries and values in the state of Indiana and everywhere.

Back Jacket

'Stone, ' the first story in Indiana Winter, begins: 'My home is a harbor. It floats on limestone high above the Ohio. Underneath our feet, acids eat away the stone and there are underground rivers and caves and, I swear it, if you were small enough and didn't mind tight black places, darker than any dark you could imagine, and you could crawl through slime and rushing water through tunnels that could end with any step in a cavern so deep you would never stop falling, if you didn't mind knowing that could happen at any moment, it the thought of cave-ins and earthquakes does not concern you because you somehow carry yourself with you gently as a baby, you could be the first person to crawl from Indiana to the brightly lit caverns in Kentucky.'

Author Biography

SUSAN NEVILLE is Associate Professor of English at Butler University. Her previous publications include numerous essays and a book entitled The Invention of Flight.