Uncommon & Other Stories

<p class=ql-align-justify>The broad range of characters in William Cass's moving second short story collection <em>Uncommon & Other Stories</em> all share a fascination with right action-how we know it when we know it and what that knowledge asks of us-in real time or in retrospect. Cass's stories are deeply rooted in the particularities of daily life and of nature-whether how to run a small inn in Arizona harvest hay in Montana mend an old woman's decaying picket fence feed oneself through a stomach tube teach an abandoned child how to garden rob your neighbors' vacation homes. Even in regret there is a bracing affirmation however delayed that other choices were possible and that we are graced by this knowledge however uncomfortable it may also be. As one narrator explains <em>Now as I enter this final chapter of life I'm struck at how much of it has been made up of encounters and events like those-many random and seemingly small some involving choices or control and others not-and how their meaning remains mysterious indelible confounding fervent.</em></p><p><br></p>