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into her hand, and "Summer Help," a sad and funny account of an assembly line painter who yearns to be an artist, offer us an insider's look at how such workers keep going. To his credit, Secreast makes it clear that work matters in very human and humane ways. He is never condescending about laborers or polemical about labor. To him, character matters more. Telling a good story matters most. Stories in which nothing happens are tiresome and forgettable. The fourteen stories in this collection are lively and memorable. They are the kinds of stories one can "dine out on," as the British say, regaling dinner companions with someone else's funny stones. There is Wanda, who unwittingly becomes the destroyer of her own front yard; Kelton Mims, the Viewmaster freak whose couch is a canoe; Virgil Rummelhart, who hires a witch to give his tormentors warts; or Fay, who is assaulted by an octopus her husband was keeping in an aquarium. For fish bait. In the motel room at Myrtle Beach. That one will get you dessert. Taken in order, Secreast's stories read like a novel. As one moves back and forth among them, there is a stereopticon effect, like looking into Kelton's Viewmaster . On one hand, the stories are like the individual views along the edge of the reel. But when they lock into focus as pairs, there is more color and greater depth. Random reading is fine, but for the best effect, Secreast's ordering is essential. The book jacket quotes Fred Chappell, "One of the best books of stories I ever read .... Donald Secreast's respect for the people he writes about is genuine, and his knowledge of their lives profound ." Contemporary small-town Appalachian life has not been presented with more appeal than here in the story of Boehm and its people. To the north and west of the town are the Great Smoky Mountains. To the east are the Brushy Mountains. Kelton Mims cannot figure out "why the town had spawned so many furniture factories .... The town didn't work on logic, and that was why, Kelton admitted to himself, he could never leave it." There is something of Kelton Mims in Donald Secreast, who cannot leave this place either. Like him, some of us grew up in places like Boehm. This is our book, and our story, too. —Parks Lanier Strunk, Frank C. Jordon's Wager. Walker & Company, New York. 240 pages. $19.95. A murder mystery set in mountainous Eastern Kentucky in the days of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps, Model A Fords, illegal moonshine , and overbearing lumber barons certainly is not the conventional crime novel. Frank Strunk's Jordon's Wager is the authentic, colorful, and highly readable story of a middle-aged deputy sheriff who must struggle with two dilemmas : he must solve a murder case, and in that process must resolve—for himself—whether it's better to be right or to be elected full sheriff. Berkeley Jordon is a widower, a gambler who once served time in prison for killing the men who attacked him, a deputy sheriff running for election to replace his boss—a traditional rural lawman more attuned to politics than to law enforcement. A pregnant 18-year-old girl is brutally murdered, and surface evidence points to her young CCC camp boyfriend who runs then returns to insist he is innocent. Jordon's investigation reveals a second boyfriend, the playboy son of the local timber baron; both the timberman and the sheriff make it overly clear to Berkely Jordon that his investigation has gone far enough. Any more, he is warned, and he will lose the election. 66 And his job. Jordon persists. He is fired, just weeks before the election, but decides to solve the crime anyhow. And does, with a shrewd investigation and a surprise twist. The Appalachian atmosphere of the era—roadnouses, bootleggers lurking in the shadows, the coming of cars and ready-made cigarettes—is all very real. The camp town, owned and run by the huge lumber company, is very much like the coal camps which once dotted the Kentucky mountains. Without lecturing, without editorializing...

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