The House Across from the Deaf School

The House across from the Deaf School, Michael Gills' third collection of short fiction, continues the life and times of Joey Harvell, whose stepfather, in "Last Words on Lonoke," gives him a .30-06, tells him not to aim at anything he doesn't want to kill, and "that's pretty much it for [his] gun safety lessons." Later, in "What The Newly Dead Don't Know But Learn," his uncle swims Joey and a group of fake cowboys across a creek on Camp Robinson, only a fisherman's trotline is stretched across the S-curve, and the result, like the book as a whole, is a hard fight there's no recovering from. What others have said about Gills' work: "Each word is a spark, every sentence a sizzling fuse. The whole...is a sun-white conflagration, cleanly and cleansing. Michael Gills sojourned in the heart of light and he has returned to his home world with that light still cling to his ever utterance.."--Fred Chappell "Michael Gills' prose reeks with accuracy and bulls-eye intensity..."--William Harrison "These stories are, scene by scene, sentence by sentence, beautifully written--clean, gorgeous prose, perfectly pitched. The detail work is exquisite. Suffering and loss are given their necessary place in these stories, but so too are grace and mercy."--Donald Hays