Rory's Not That Guy: And Other Tales from Middle America takes the reader on a tour of " flyover country," from struggling small towns to honky-tonks to the parts of cities that don't make it onto postcards. It's 19 short stories, many humorous, many not, include coming of age in a hopeless small town (" Art" ), what if you could go back in time and go to high school again (" No Returns" ), and what happens when your carefully arranged world is disrupted by civil unrest (" Willie Wallace" ). Fifteen of the nineteen stories have been published in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies, including The New Guard, Evening Street Press & Review, and American Fiction. What links these stories-- beyond geography-- is the shared humanity of its characters. Each are struggling with a world which for some is hostile, and for all confusing and beyond their control. Some are lost, some are still trying, and some have given up, but all are sympathetic and believable. In the end, the reader will find that rather than something to fly over, these stories reflect if not the postcards vision of Middle America, but for so many, the reality.
