Hazards of Nature: Stories: Stories

As the title of Brandon Dudleys excellent chapbook suggests bad things happen to the people in his stories. A young boy is teased past bearing by his brutish father and brothers. A man faces an agonizing choice: to give up either the wife he loves or the children he has always wanted but that she refuses to have. An elderly widower finds solace in his attachment to a tree he has planted but is hopeless when it comes to connecting with his fellow human beings.These are ordinary people and the trouble that finds them is ordinary too. Whether or not youve ever been old and isolated or helplessly bullied or torn between two equally powerful desires the range of human emotions here-fear anger love sadness loneliness mortification loss-is sure to be familiar. What makes the stories in Hazards of Nature so compelling for me is not just the writers insightful portraits of his characters struggles but his sensitivity in regard to their pain. -from the Introduction by Sigrid Nunez