The Boys' House

Sixty-four new and selected tales spanning more than twenty years in the career of a modern master of the short story. These sixty-four sharply honed stories, selected by the author from more than twenty years of work, showcase Jim Heynen's equal mastery of terse, elegant prose and old-style country wit and wisdom. Every tale is an unerring slice from the lives of a group of farm boys, each full of mischief and witness to the world's tiny miracles. They make coat sails to carry them down a frozen road, teach a three-legged dog to shake hands, build a house from the junk grown-ups throw away, but they also rescue pigs from an unexpected blizzard, feed apples to a blind pony, and learn the songs of different birds. Along the way, they encounter an unforgettable cast of characters: the goose lady, the girl at school with six toes, the man who kept cigars in his cap, Spitting Sally, their crazy Uncle Jack, and dozens more. Heynen's stories, as uniquely American as those of Mark Twain or Sherwood Anderson, are ribald fun, but, like all good country tales, they are also filled with surprises and unexpected, deeper implications. For this book Heynen has written twenty new stories and revised many of those tales originally published in his first two collections, both now unavailable.

Jim Heynen was born on a farm in northwest Iowa and received his first eight years of education at one of the state's last one-room schoolhouses, Welcome #3. He attended Calvin College and the University of Iowa, where he did graduate work in English Renaissance literature. He received his M.F.A. in creative writing from University of Oregon. He has published three previous collections of stories: The One-Room Schoolhouse, You Know What Is Right, and The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap. His novels for young adults include Cosmos Coyote and William the Nice and Being Youngest, and his collections of poetry include Standing Naked: New and Selected Poems. He is also the editor of Fishing for Chickens: Stories about Rural Youth. Since 1992, he has been Writer in Residence at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He lives in St. Paul