A Working Man's Apocrypha: Short Stories — William Luvaas

Cutting-edge fiction that breathes life into unlikely characters

In these 14 stories, William Luvaas weaves magic and absurdity around characters caught between apocalypse and heartbreak. A Working Man's Apocrypha conveys the joys and misfortunes of characters tested by trauma or loss, who regularly find unexpected opportunities for survival.

Nature has gone mad in stories like "Yesterday After the Storm," wherein a tornado whirls away a man's wife and daughter, Big and Little Lilly, and all hell breaks loose when they return midway into his ensuing love affair with Little Lilly's former schoolteacher. "Season of Limb Fall" "rides the whirlwind," as Blackbird editor Mary Flynn suggests. Odd and ominous windfalls remain in the wake of a malevolent storm, and survivors are left to puzzle out what they mean to their lives. Flood waters cover all but the tops of the California Coast Range in "Rain."  Survivors huddle about black bones of their fires, fearing ravenous wild pigs in surrounding redwoods. Some build makeshift arks, anticipating the world's watery end, hoping to follow "The Messenger" to some new Ararat. After her diabetic handyman's suicide in the collection's title story, "A Working Man's Apocrypha," Louise finds John Sylvio's haunting, nearly illiterate diary which documents his unrequited love for her, and she is ambushed by love and loss. A son reconciles with his disapproving father who is fading into Alzheimer's in "To The Death." Lizzie, in "The Woman Who Was Allergic To Herself," confronts the death of her self-esteem and her marriage and heals herself from the ravages of an auto-immune disorder by writing a fairy tale. Twins Holly and Howard are surprised by the demise of their childhood intimacy in "The Sexual Revolution," after adolescent hormones kick in and they can no longer read each others' thoughts.

Common to all of these tales is a sense of something longed for...just out of reach.   Inexplicable and wondrous forces are at work behind human fate.   Characters are tested, often in unexpected ways, and generally arrive at some epiphany about themselves and the world they inhabit.