Time Between Trains: Stories

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Southern Methodist University Press, 2003 - Fiction - 188 pages
Welcome to Superior, Wisconsin, the westernmost port on the Great Lakes, home to a declining population, often-dismal weather, and dying ethnic communities. Despite the biting winter winds and the ore dust blanketing the city, miracles occur here. In the title story, the only Jewish track inspector for the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe system discovers a magical place behind the drab house of a lonely Polish schoolteacher; in "Closing Time,” an accordion player working the bar of the local VFW finds an appreciative audience in a disillusioned German war bride; in "The Moon of the Grass Fires,” a retired flour mill worker has a vision of ultimate goodness and the meaning of his life one beautiful autumn evening as, covered with wheat dust, he takes a walk near the East End’s abandoned ore docks.

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Contents

Time Between Trains
19
Winter Weeds
45
Closing Time
61
Copyright

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About the author (2003)

ANTHONY BUKOSKI grew up in the Polish East End neighborhood of Superior, Wisconsin. A year after graduating from high school, he enlisted and served as a Marine in South Vietnam. Upon his discharge from the service, he finished his B.A. with a double major in English and German at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. He received an M.A. in English from Brown University, an M.F.A. in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and later a Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa. He now teaches English at his alma mater in the port city where his Polish emigré grandparents first settled. His stories have been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, have twice won special mention, and have appeared in many literary venues in the U.S. and Canada, including New Letters, Quarterly West, and The Literary Review. He is the author of three other story collections, Twelve Below Zero (1986), Children of Strangers (SMU, 1993), and Polonaise (SMU, 1999). The recipient of a 2002 fellowship in fiction from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, he is currently at work on a novel. He and his wife Elaine live in the country outside Superior.

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