Wind Stories (Plume Contemporary Fiction)

Using the small town of Oswego, New York as a backdrop, Leigh Allison Wilson's Wind depicts the lives of women having to deal with inter-sexual relationships in some way. A dark overtone could be felt inside the first short story, Masse. The main character, Janice, had a very ordered lifestyle. She went to work, came home and slept, then went out to the bars to make a few bucks playing pool. It was only when her schedule was changed a little, that Janice had difficulties later on in the story line. This story was full of so many symbolic features and references that it would be hard to be pulled any other way when trying to figure out why Janice was having such a hard time dealing with her schedule being knocked off balance. Symbols, such as the stoic 'Rock Fish' eating everything smaller than it to her inability to 'feel anything' during a sexual encounter with the bartender Philas, suggests that Janice had a traumatic experience with a former man in her life, either her father or a past boyfriend. Through out the rest of the book I could see a pattern developing where a little described male figure having a profound effect on the main female characters. A different approach was taken in the next 2 stories, Where She Was and Missing Persons. Both of these stories centred on a young girl named Susan. The first story was told in the first person narrative while Missing Persons was told in the third. Where She Was depicts an 8 year old Susan going through the transition of moving from her birthplace in Tennessee to Oswego, New York. She soon meets young african boy named Raymond Scofield and the two become close friends. This story illumes to a lot through the vantage point of young Susan's eyes. Her father seemed to rub off as an optimistic braggart with his many 'proclamations' of how things will get better and the later showing off in front of his bosses. You knew there where problems in the marriage between her biological parents over money and other 'un mentioned' things. By the end of the story, I got the feeling that she revered her father more than her mother, due to the fact that most of the story had her dad begin described while the mother was left a few lines here and there. Maybe this was due to the fact that her mother would later leave her father for Raymond's father, Mr. Scofield. Mr. Scofield could be seen as an easy reason why Susan would grow to hate men. Her dad, through his reactions to situations, can also be seen as another man in her life that failed her in some way. A good example from this story was when he took Susan and Raymond for a tour of the power plant he worked at. During the tour, he got into an altercation with his boss. Instead of standing up to him, Susan's father ended up backing down from the argument. His backing down was something unfathomable to Susan, who thought of her dad like most children her age did a strong willed person. Another example of how she fel