Mattaponi Queen Stories

Winner of the 2009 Bakeless Fiction Prize, a confident debut collection about life on and around the Mattaponi Indian Reservation Set on the Mattaponi Indian Reservation and in its surrounding counties, the stories in this linked collection detail the lives of rural men and women with stark realism and plainspoken humor. A young military couple faces a future shadowed by injury and untold secrets. A dying alcoholic attempts to reconcile with his estranged children. And an elderly woman's nurse weathers life with her irascible charge by making payments on a decrepit houseboattheMattaponi Queen. The land is parceled into lots, work opportunities are few, and the remaining inhabitants must choose between desire and necessity as they navigate the murky stream of possession, love, and everything in between.

BELLE BOGGS has published work in Glimmer Train, Oxford American, and Best New American Voices 2003. She received an MA in fiction from the University of California at Irvine and grew up in King William County, Virginia.

By now, [the shad] would have been baking for hours, the bones soft and gelatinous in the tough salty flesh. Ronnie could almost taste it, intense and rare, not like food at all. It was like love, she thought. Something you thought you should have until it was right there in front of you and you realized you were committed to it whole. —from “Good News for a Hard Time”