The geographical cure

the long version

In The Geographical Cure, a collection of six short fictions, Michael Parker again explores the lush and mysterious heart of the American South. Parker revisits his native coastal North Carolina, probing the passions and tensions in the lives of his characters, outsiders struggling to find a place to belong. In "Love Wild," an erotic past haunts a pair of lovers whose refusal to accept the present dooms a third, innocent person. "Cursive" tells the story of Walker and Bev, a couple of on-the-lam teenagers who find refuge and desire in unlikely places: beneath the eaves of an overpass, behind the wheel of a stolen car. In "As Told To," two elderly brothers must confront a history that has long festered between them. And in Parker's most ambitious novella, "Golden Hour," a funk band (including a former beach-music idol and a Marxist) is stranded at a rural vocational school, sparking a comic clash of bigotry, political hypocrisy, and nostalgia. . The Geographical Cure asks timely and searching questions about the meaning of a culture, its hurts and its remedies, and answers those questions with Michael Parker's unique candor and grace. With characters and situations that are vivid, quirky, and irresistible, Michael Parker emerges as an indefatigable stylist whose work challenges and delights.