The Fountain of Highlandtown: Stories

You don't need to have lived in Baltimore to be enchanted with these mystical stories, but only those wholly unacquainted with the Charm City of the Patapsco Drainage Basin will have a prayer of reading them without a lump in the throat, a mist in the eyes, or some prickles of goose flesh. "The Fountain of Highlandtown" is a wonderful, magical first collection of short stories by long-time Baltimore Sun reporter and feature writer Rafael Alvarez. Most of the stories are set in the Greektown/Highlandtown area of Baltimore, and beautifully evoke the spirit of the diverse immigrant cultures--Greek, Spanish, Ukranian, Polish, Italian, and . . . well, spin the globe--that thrived there in the first half of this century, and still hang on amidst creeping urban decay. As William Faulkner did with Yoknapatawpha County (his fictionalized Oxford, Mississippi), Alvarez is excruciatingly faithful to the earth-bound details and cadences of this strange corner of Baltimore, which he calls his "Holy Land." But, also as in Faulkner, the stories of these characters and their lives transcend mere nostalgia and "local color" and speak to some of the great themes of literature: the amazing grace at work when love and the human heart is found, lost, betrayed, redeemed. So order your copy today, hon! And come see us in Bawlmer, down Hollandtayon!