In Love with the World Outside Her Window

The title story in The Hanging in the Foaling Barn by Susan Starr Richards is the best in this collection. It is the result of a potent combination of compelling plot twists and the writer’s understanding of the world in which her major characters, Luther and Maurice, live. In the remaining stories the latter element never fades. Richards is genuinely fascinated, even mesmerized, by rural life. In “The Hanging in the Foaling Barn” she gets it right; not only do we have compelling major characters, but we also have a complex study of their world, which dictates their hopes and dreams as well as their views of life and death. More than a dozen years ago this story earned first prize in the illustrious O. Henry Awards competition—which means that some folks who are considered jewelers in the short-story genre decided this was the finest unearthed American gem of a calendar year. It is a story that still sparkles radiantly.

“The Hanging in the Foaling Barn” opens with Luther, the foaling man on a thoroughbred breeding farm, receiving a call from Maurice, the night watchman. Maurice announces that he will soon hang himself in the foaling barn. Thus begins a compelling story of two characters who, remarkably and believably, are able to convince each other (and themselves) that better days are ahead. The story also ably reflects the motive driving the sport of thoroughbred racing—that there is no problem a fast horse cannot solve.

“The Hanging in the Foaling Barn” is a terrific story with a handsome title; some of the other titles here are quirky—“The Murderer, The Pony and Miss Brown to You,” “The Ape in the Face,” and “Clarence Cummins and the Semi-Permanent Loan”—and these stories are less focused on plot. Occasionally the reader has the impression the background of the story is more interesting to the writer than what is happening in the plot. Plenty of attention is paid to barns and farm implements as well as to other odd items (such as the old pony cart in “Clarence Cummins”), and the results are not uninteresting. But, at some point, the reader should feel the wonder of the unfolding story. The effect here is perhaps comparable to being the first one to arrive at a cocktail party. You are shown the house by the hostess and see what a lovely home it is, yet you do worry about when the other guests will arrive.

In some of the other stories both horse-racing and breeding are relegated to the periphery. This seems a shame, especially when we have a writer who has already shown she has a deft touch with the milieu.

These stories generally involve characters living quiet, seemingly unremarkable lives. The world of the farm is the backdrop for “Man Walking” and “Grass Fires,” and each story is told in a pleasant, if meandering, fashion. Perhaps the farm setting has something to do with this, and I suppose in this way Richards is only being true to the world she seems so deeply taken with. Farm life requires patience, and it does build an appreciation for what might otherwise seem forgettable. Consider a passage from “Man Walking”: “The farm was everything she wanted—when they had first looked at it, it brought tears to her eyes. She had loved it when it was a tangle, abandoned, crazy fences and old machinery everywhere.” Here the author is referring to an unnamed protagonist moving onto an untamed parcel of land with her husband.

The truth is this might also be the best way of relating the strongest overall impression a reader might get from Susan Starr Richards’s collection of stories. The stories have their tangles—they could use some reorganization and trimming—but they are also usually rich with feeling and wonder.

“The Screened Porch” is a dreamy tale of a quartet of unnamed sisters who are sequestered in a house where their parents seem to be only...