Summary

In his debut short-fiction collection, The Way Things Always Happen Here, Kevin C. Stewart takes his readers to the scene of a heinous murder, to the home of an alcoholic single mother, to the 1960s election campaign of JFK through West Virginia, and off the side of the New River Gorge Bridge. In these eight stories set in fictional Oak County in southern West Virginia, and one novella set in the Arkansas Ozarks, Stewart gives us characters who all love and hate where they’re from.

ForeWord Award Finalist

Contents

• one mississippi
• the way things always happen here
• her
• sarah's story
• debts
• red dog
• june hay
• the pillar of william's grave
• margot

Author

Among other awards, Kevin C. Stewart won the Texas Review Novella Prize for a short story entitled Margot, which is featured in this book. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arkansas, along with degrees in English, architecture, and civil engineering. He currently serves as a professor of English and Creative Writing at Carroll College in Montana.

Reviews

"These stories of hard realities and painfully won wisdom are absolutely jam-packed with those simmering, guarded secrets and dark desires we all share."
Chuck Kinder, author Snakehunter and Last Mountain Dancer

"Raw beauty is the heart of this collection where hope and despair mingle, where the mountains shelter and confine. Stewart renders this struggle and beauty in these stories that capture in fiction our many hard truths."
Jim Minick, Journal of Appalachian Studies