Each of these impeccably crafted and sensitive stories is built around the outstanding ordinary individuals, the eccentrics of the rural working class of Mary Bush's native upstate New York. These are gritty depictions of the day-to-day lives of the hardworking poor, carrying with them their secret burdens. At the cores of these wide-ranging narratives are moments of surprise, illuminations that stun the thoughtful central personalities themselves. "Like Richard Russo, Carolyn Chute, and Robert Olmstead, Mary Bush carves out compassion and richness from a stony and forested world of lives lived in isolation from the urban mainstream. She renders the justifiable rage of those lives, of the women and men trapped in their harshness, but more, finally, their enduring and redeeming ability to forgive" - Douglas Unger.
Each of these impeccably crafted and sensitive stories is built around the outstanding ordinary individuals, the eccentrics of the rural working class of Mary Bush's native upstate New York. These are gritty depictions of the day-to-day lives of the hardworking poor, carrying with them their secret burdens. At the cores of these wide-ranging narratives are moments of surprise, illuminations that stun the thoughtful central personalities themselves. "Like Richard Russo, Carolyn Chute, and Robert Olmstead, Mary Bush carves out compassion and richness from a stony and forested world of lives lived in isolation from the urban mainstream. She renders the justifiable rage of those lives, of the women and men trapped in their harshness, but more, finally, their enduring and redeeming ability to forgive" - Douglas Unger.