Down Along the Piney

<p><i>Down Along the Piney</i> is John Mort's fourth short-story collection and winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction. With settings in Florida California Mexico Chicago the Texas Panhandle and of course the Ozarks themselves these thirteen stories portray the unsung amusing brutal forever hopeful lives of ordinary people. Mort chronicles the struggles of flyover people who live not just in the Midwest but anywhere you can find a farm small town or river winding through forested hills. Mort whose earlier stories have appeared in the <i>New Yorker</i> <i>GQ</i> and <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> is the author of the award-winning Vietnam War novel <i>Soldier in Paradise</i> as well as <i>Goat Boy of the Ozarks</i> and <i>The Illegal</i>. These ironic unflaggingly honest stories will remind the reader of Jim Harrison Sherwood Anderson and Shirley Jackson.</p>