Hello. I wrote a book of short stories called Wild Punch.
You get it at your local bookshop (ask them to stock it if they don't have it now) or you can learn more here:
http://www.crestonlea.com/
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You get it at your local bookshop (ask them to stock it if they don't have it now) or you can learn more here:
http://www.crestonlea.com/
--
Mr. Lea can write one hell of a story. In point of fact, This is a
book of wonderful awful scary marvelous stories. I kept expecting to
hit the wall, to be overwhelmed with depression at the intractable
fates Lea chronicles, but somehow, magically, he kept me reading
through, out the other side of grim and right into stubborn awe. Get
this book in print so I can give copies to everyone I know.
-Dorothy Allison
I love the way this guy writes about animals, especially the human ones.
-Jo Ann Beard
"Attentive, sure-footed, possessed of an engaging voice and, best of all, a
spirit of generosity, Creston Lea's Wild Punch is an exciting new find for
any serious reader of short stories."
spirit of generosity, Creston Lea's Wild Punch is an exciting new find for
any serious reader of short stories."
-Rick Bass
"It’s an absolutely terrific work of fiction by the best young writer I’ve read in years. "
-Howard Frank Mosher
"It’s an absolutely terrific work of fiction by the best young writer I’ve read in years. "
-Howard Frank Mosher
Lea is a new voice for the rural North Country in the tradition of Howard
Frank Mosher, Russell Banks and Annie Proulx. His prose crackles with
insight. He'll make you laugh and he'll make you cry, and if you're that
North Country person he'll make you understand yourself a little better.”
-Ernest Hebert
Frank Mosher, Russell Banks and Annie Proulx. His prose crackles with
insight. He'll make you laugh and he'll make you cry, and if you're that
North Country person he'll make you understand yourself a little better.”
-Ernest Hebert
How did this happen? Creston Lea’s debut collection, Wild Punch, flew entirely under the radar, and now a small band of readers keeps a terrible, beautiful secret. Well, be clean, conscience! I’m sharing. If you wish there were more Breece Pancakes or Pinckney Benedicts in the world, then Lea is your man. If you have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, let Wild Punch be your entry into a brand of rural fiction that illuminates certain facets of American experience in a kind yet unflinching light. Understated and perceptive, the stories in this indispensable volume will stay with you like your own memories. - The Paris Review
In his brilliant debut collection of short stories, Creston Lea creates an unbearable tension that something awful is about to happen to the people he features. Set primarily in a harsh, unforgiving part of New Hampshire, the tales share an elusive, mysterious quality that keeps readers on edge: sometimes what you worry might happen doesn't and life goes on; then again, nature will take an unexpected turn that sends shock waves through characters and readers simultaneously.
In two pages or 20, Lea can paint portraits of people vibrating with nature's challenges, yet verging on near-paralysis as they realize the small town life they know is on its last legs. They do not, however, ask for sympathy--they are as tough as the granite for which their state is famous. A preacher, on a particularly bad day, can still say, "I could feel my whole head fill up with the fluids that come with tears. The perfect swaying beauty of the tall hydrangea trees on the side of the road as I pulled off the pavement and climbed the rise of the Old Cemetery carrying the wasted body of a black rooster on a hot Indian summer Sunday made me turn inside out."
Comparisons will inevitably (and deservedly) be made between Wild Punch and the short stories of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver. Like Joyce especially, Lea displays enormous empathy for his characters. Struggling, tight-lipped and self-deprecating, they are members of a generation that sees no hope for themselves unless they leave the place they call home. In capturing the physical and psychic attachment his characters harbor for their dying home towns, Creston achieves greatness as a poet of place. His incisive, heartfelt descriptions of gray-to-white winter skies, black fly and mosquito swarms in summer, hay fields at harvest time and ice-covered lakes are enough to explain why nobody in his stories can depart the territory without suffering even greater loss.
Each time one of his stumbling, barely articulate guys looks at some local signpost rather than meet the eyes of the person standing beside him, familiarity with the terrain is the only thing that helps him see what has changed at that moment and what remains unsaid. "The house was different that time of night and I might as well have not spent a single minute there before, it felt so unfamiliar standing in the yard with Michelle. 'Do you mean you were locked up?' Normally I would have had trouble asking something like that, but I was starting to not feel much like myself." Lea's astonishing use of plain-spoken language lets us be present at just such moments.--John McFarland, Shelf Awareness
Shelf Talker: An exquisite and gritty short story collection that illuminates the people and harsh landscapes of New Hampshire with love and empathy.
In his brilliant debut collection of short stories, Creston Lea creates an unbearable tension that something awful is about to happen to the people he features. Set primarily in a harsh, unforgiving part of New Hampshire, the tales share an elusive, mysterious quality that keeps readers on edge: sometimes what you worry might happen doesn't and life goes on; then again, nature will take an unexpected turn that sends shock waves through characters and readers simultaneously.
In two pages or 20, Lea can paint portraits of people vibrating with nature's challenges, yet verging on near-paralysis as they realize the small town life they know is on its last legs. They do not, however, ask for sympathy--they are as tough as the granite for which their state is famous. A preacher, on a particularly bad day, can still say, "I could feel my whole head fill up with the fluids that come with tears. The perfect swaying beauty of the tall hydrangea trees on the side of the road as I pulled off the pavement and climbed the rise of the Old Cemetery carrying the wasted body of a black rooster on a hot Indian summer Sunday made me turn inside out."
Comparisons will inevitably (and deservedly) be made between Wild Punch and the short stories of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver. Like Joyce especially, Lea displays enormous empathy for his characters. Struggling, tight-lipped and self-deprecating, they are members of a generation that sees no hope for themselves unless they leave the place they call home. In capturing the physical and psychic attachment his characters harbor for their dying home towns, Creston achieves greatness as a poet of place. His incisive, heartfelt descriptions of gray-to-white winter skies, black fly and mosquito swarms in summer, hay fields at harvest time and ice-covered lakes are enough to explain why nobody in his stories can depart the territory without suffering even greater loss.
Each time one of his stumbling, barely articulate guys looks at some local signpost rather than meet the eyes of the person standing beside him, familiarity with the terrain is the only thing that helps him see what has changed at that moment and what remains unsaid. "The house was different that time of night and I might as well have not spent a single minute there before, it felt so unfamiliar standing in the yard with Michelle. 'Do you mean you were locked up?' Normally I would have had trouble asking something like that, but I was starting to not feel much like myself." Lea's astonishing use of plain-spoken language lets us be present at just such moments.--John McFarland, Shelf Awareness
Shelf Talker: An exquisite and gritty short story collection that illuminates the people and harsh landscapes of New Hampshire with love and empathy.