Under My Wings Everything Prospers

This is the third Harnack book I have read since I discovered his writing several weeks ago. This guy can write! The first two books I'd read were memoirs, which is my genre of choice most of the time. But this collection of six short stories and a novella (White Blood) was certainly worth reading. Every story is a small gem of perfectly realized characters, from the grotesque giant, son of the town banker in "Voice of the Town" to the middle-aged husband who is seduced by his son's mistress ("My Son, Stuart")to an aging Iowa woman who is left behind by her grown children and takes in a mob of opportunistic hippies passing through town ("Madness"). As I read these stories I tried to figure out who Harnack's influences might have been, but couldn't decide. I thought of Sherwood Anderson, Cheever, O'Hara and even Updike. But perhaps what I was reading here was simply pure Harnack. His portraits of women are every bit as good as the men, which is not an easy thing for a male writer. McMurtry did that hat trick well in his novels Moving On and Terms of Endearment, but I can think of few others. Harnack's characters also brought to mind Elizabeth Strout's books Amy and Isabelle and the recent Pulitzer prize-winning Olive Kitteredge - a collection of stories which formed a novel. What is so very sad is that most of Harnack's books are out of print. But if you can find them, by all means get them and read them. I'll say it again. This guy can WRITE! - Tim Bazzett, author of LOVE, WAR & POLIO