Sorrow's Drive — Michael Alenyikov

From a UN Peacekeeper searching for meaning in East Timor, to a lonely boy in San Francisco bonding with his dying bohemian grandmother as she recounts her last trip to Italy, to a middle aged man from Boston looking back on his first trip to pre-AIDS San Francisco, to a retired history professor in San Francisco driving cross country to the Boston of his youth, remembering his early struggles with being gay, while a star baseball player in high school and college in the 40s and 50s's, these novellas sweep across continents, decades, and memories, capturing the aftermath of the loss of innocence.These four stunning novellas have an almost magical effect as Alenyikov masterfully weaves together disparate lives and universal themes into something approaching the sublime. He evokes the common goodness of people, as well as the common heartbreaking challenge that we all face and feel compelled to understand. Each story complements and clarifies the others in their exploration of family, of displacement and loneliness, of trying to find a way forward by looking back.-Trebor Healey, two time winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award, author of A Horse Named Sorrow.Michael Alenyikov's Sorrow Drive is a remarkable achievement. Grief-struck and yet so full of life and love on every page, each of these four stories carry a great deal of emotional weight. Taken together the cumulative effect of the book is as glorious as it is sorrowful.-Peter Orner, author of Still No Word from You: Notes in the Margin