Same Place, Same Things Stories

Set largely in rural Louisiana, Tim Gautreaux''s masterful debut story collection follows men and women whose ordinary lives reach a point of rupture, a moment when convention gives way to crisis and everything changes: A drunken train engineer charges toward disaster, a father borrows and old airplane to chase down his daughter''s kidnapper, a young man falls in love with a voice on the radio. Written with humor, suspense, and a powerful affection for humanity in all its wild forms, Same Place, Same Things is the first great work by a master of the form. Tim Gautreaux has written three novels and two collections of short stories, one of which, Welding With Children , was selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly , Harper''s, GQ, and Zoetrope , and also in volumes of The O. Henry Prize Stories , Best American Short Stories , and New Stories from the South . He is a professor emeritus/writer in residence in the English Department at Southeastern Louisiana University. In this collection of stories, Tim Gautreaux chronicles the lives of "ordinary" people who face extraordinary circumstances and decisions: a farmer faced with the prospect of raising his infant granddaughter; a young man who falls in love with a voice on the radio; a train engineer who causes a colossal disaster. In tales filled with heart and humor, with events and consequences, both the customs and culture of Louisiana come to life in the hands of a writer who blends rare talent with an even more unusual humanity. "Astounding . . . Masteries of grace and understatement, reminders of a what is most precious in human life . . . [Written] with an exquisitely expressed tenderness and hopefulness." '”Polly Paddock, The Charlotte Observer "As good as stories get '” any stories, in any time or place . . . Imbued with the rich roux of family, place, race, and religion that is the base of all good southern fiction." '”Susan Larson, The Times-Picayune (New Orleans) "Gautreaux is as good a storyteller as just about anyone writing short fiction in America today." '”Joel Lovell , The Boston Phoenix "This man is a wonderful writer . . . I can honestly say I love to read his stories. He never exaggerates, never manipulates the reader''s affections, but nonetheless he always captures the heart."'” James Lee Burke "A terrific debut collection from a Louisiana writer whose stylish, sympathetic understanding of working-class sensibilities and Cajun culture gives his work a flavor and universality unique among contemporary writers. Gautreaux''s 12 stories move to a musical beat, and they''re filled with both verbal surprises and sudden narrative twists'”sometimes into unanticipated violence, sometimes, contrarily, toward revelations of more decency and strength in his characters than we had believed them capable of. His people include the itinerant pump repairman (in the title story) who gets unfortunately involved with a phlegmatic widow who''ll do anything to escape her stifling life and environment; the middle-aged widower (of ''The Courtship of Merlin Le Blanc'') who finds he can''t escape the constrictions'”and satisfactions'”of family; a well-meaning exterminator (''The Bug Man'') who becomes intimately, catastrophically involved in the lives of his clients; and, most memorably, the nursing-home employee (in the wonderful ''Deputy Sid''s Gift'') whose confused responses to the ''black drunk truck thief'' who keeps invading his life eventually rescue him from his own meanness . . . All of the tales are powered by a racy, vigorous prose that makes you want to keep on quoting (''He didn''t know her from Adam''s house cat''; ''You can''t work too steady if you''re a Louisiana man. You got to lay off and smell the roses a bit, drink a little beer and put some wear on your truck''). Moving and memorable portrayals of people who really are changed'”and, often, in spite of themselves, uplifted'”by the complexities of their experien