by Steve Pfarrer

AN EPISODE OF GRACE

By Linda McCullough Moore

Levellers Press

lindamcculloughmoore.com

Florence author Linda McCullough Moore has won growing praise for her short stories and a novel, “A Distance Between,” drawing comparisons to writers like Anne Tyler and Alice Munro with her focus on small but telling moments in people’s lives, as well as some dry humor to leaven the tales.

In “An Episode of Grace,” published by Levellers Press of Amherst, Moore offers 19 stories, most narrated by women or built around female characters often grappling with troubled or stagnant marriages, or emotional needs that aren’t being met.

Her stories can also pivot on unexpected developments, in which a seemingly murky situation suddenly becomes clearer.

In “Processing Claims,” the narrator, a claims representative for a health insurance company (“I am the court of last appeals,” she says), gets a phone call from her ex-husband, Carlton, who’s demanding the company cover expenses he’s incurred in getting treatment for his son.

Thing is, the caller doesn’t realize he’s speaking to his ex-wife: “Carlton doesn’t have a clue. He doesn’t recognize my voice at all. It’s like our marriage. He never knew who he was dealing with.”

The narrator has few happy memories of that union, but the fact that her ex now has a son painfully reminds her she’s still childless herself — and reawakens in her a determination to adopt a child with her new husband, Brian.

And in “You Choose,” another female narrator, driving in a snowstorm with her two young sons, ponders the terrible news she and her husband have decided to share with the boys that evening: that they’ll be divorcing, even as they try to soften the blow by eating the cake the narrator and her sons have just purchased.

“Once [my husband and I] say the words, out loud, to them, it will be official, carved in stone, irreversible,” she says. “But, of course, that’s what we want.”

But then the mother and her sons are waylaid by the blizzard, forced to stop, with many other drivers, at the side of the road. As they wait, a single mother with her baby climbs in with them, as her own car was filling with fumes; then a policeman asks the narrator if a young girl whose mother has just been killed in a crash can also wait in her car.

Watching the interplay of these disparate characters, especially how her older son comforts the now-motherless girl, the narrator reexamines her decision to divorce: “What if staying married is not better just for children and the planet Earth and everyone who lives here, what if staying married is better for you?”

As Publishers Weekly writes, Moore is “a keen observer of gestures and detailed interpreter of loaded silences … creating sharply drawn, quirky yet familiar female characters struggling to learn from the contradictions of their lives.”

The author reads from “An Episode of Grace” on Saturday, April 1 at 3 p.m. at Helen Hills Chapel in Northampton.

DANIEL FINDS A POEM

By Micha Archer

Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin Random House

www.michaarcher.com

Is there poetry in nature? Lots of people would say yes, including Daniel, the young protagonist of “Daniel Finds a Poem,” a picture book by Amherst artist Micha Archer.

Though she’s done illustrations for other children’s books and publications, “Daniel Finds a Poem” is the first book Archer has written.

It’s an impressive debut. A former art teacher, Archer has won the 2017 Ezra Jack Keats Book Award for best new illustrator for her work on her story.

The award is named for the American children’s author and illustrator of “The Snowy Day,” a 1963 book considered a landmark in children’s literature. Keats was recognized for being one of the first children’s writers to bring multicultural themes to that genre.

In “Daniel Finds a Poem,” the young boy in question sees a sign at a city park advertising “Poetry in the Park” later that week. Not knowing what the term means, he asks a variety of critters — a spider, a squirrel, a frog and others — if they can explain it to him.

For the spider, poetry is when “morning dew glistens.” The squirrel finds it in the sound of crispy, crackling fall leaves. A turtle thinks of poetry as “sun-warmed sand.”

Indeed, as Daniel learns, poetry is all around you if you take the time to look and listen.

Archer’s illustrations, rich in color, are composed of oil, watercolors, pen and ink, and collage, and they’re sure to delight kids and adults alike.

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.