Patchwork — Bobbie Ann Mason

A treasury of both fiction and nonfiction by the award-winning author, including new material: “What a treat . . . She's one of our very best writers.” -- Ann Beattie, author of A Wonderful Stroke of Luck

The author of such classics as Shiloh and the memoir Clear Springs, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Kentucky-born Bobbie Ann Mason has been hailed as “a full-fledged master of the short story” by Anne Tyler and “an American original” by Jayne Anne Phillips. This reader collects outstanding examples of Mason's award-winning work from throughout her career and provides a unique look at the development of one of the country's finest writers.

Patchwork contains short stories first published in the New Yorker and other leading periodicals; chapters from Mason's acclaimed novels, including In Country, An Atomic Romance, and The Girl in the Blue Beret; and riveting excerpts from Mason's eclectic nonfiction. Some examples of Mason's recent explorations in flash fiction appear here in print for the first time.

Mason's writing glows with a nuanced understanding of the struggles and pathos of American life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As George Saunders says in his introduction, “Bobbie Ann Mason is a strange and beautiful writer. . . . Her stories exist to gently touch on, and praise, even mourn, what it feels like to be alive in this moment.” Patchwork conveys Mason's extraordinary talent and range.