All My Relations

Set against the stark but seductive landscape of the American Southwest, the stories in All My Relations explore the inner landscape of mind and heart, where charting the simplest course is subject to a complex constellation of relationships. In the title story of the collection, a Pima Indian hires on with a rancher in an attempt to quit drinking and to win back the wife and son who have left him. His efforts to master land and horses and to bake the perfect cake mirror his efforts to subdue his own demons and to embrace a peaceful domesticity.In "The Big Bang and the Good House", Tony, a former drug dealer, pits his urge toward chaos against the orderly pleasures of marriage, finally yielding to the solidity and spaciousness of domestic love: "I feel myself gathering weight, density. Cautiously, I allow myself to inhabit this Good House, which surprisingly fits like my own body". Julia, the aging protagonist of "Simplifying", risks her fragile health in a love affair; her generosity of spirit toward her lover is matched in inverse proportion by the frugality with which her lover doles out his affections. In "The March of the Toys", a young woman flees Delaware, her chronically ill father, and her grieving mother, only to find that she's traded the neediness of her family for the harrowing disturbances of her lovers. She muses, "I couldn't affect anyone's life. I could only attend it".In "Hualapai Dread", an investment broker's infatuation with an enigmatic Hualapai Indian woman, as elusive as she is beautiful, brings out his most predatory instincts and unmasks her own deceit. Acting on similar but more destructive impulses toward the object of his sexual obsession, a character in another story takes his soon-to-be ex-wife on a bizarre "honeymoon for divorce". The close-knit family of "Builders" breaks under the strain of constructing their dream house with their own hands, and eventually they are forced to leave behind the illusion of safety and permanence: "Once the three had imagined themselves as a house on a hill, dug into stone with the tenacity of a lion. Now they sat tensely in canvas-backed chairs stretched like slingshots. They talked cautiously, with encouragement, hoping for the return of pleasure".Embodying the transience and openness of the New West, the characters in All My Relations reinvent themselves, even as they struggle with the age-old, perilous necessity of loving.From Publishers WeeklySet against the landscape of the American Southwest, this collection of eight precisely observed stories offers a powerful and moving series of observations about love and relationships in the modern world. In the title tale, Milton, a Pima Indian, quits drinking and finds success as a ranch hand in the employ of a stubborn white cattle owner. But his sobriety alienates him from his friends, and his long-missed wife and son return only as Milton descends into a debilitating, dream-like illness. In "Simplifying," Julia, a volunteer at the local zoo, finds renewed life in an affair with Philip, a 66 poet with brittle feet. In a line that has resonance for many of the characters here, Philip says: "For my wife and me, making a baby would have implied too much optimism about our future." In "Builders," a close-knit family implodes under the pressure of building their dream house, only to be reborn in the thinner, less burdensome air of Denver. Describing their reunion, McIlroy writes, "Now they sat tensely in canvas-backed chairs stretched like slingshots. They talked cautiously, with encouragement, hoping for the return of pleasure." A winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, McIlroy writes with a spare elegance, consistently displaying the illuminating detail or the evocative description. His stories are grittily real, occasionally disturbing, filled with the breath of life. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalMany of the stories in this collection are set in Arizona, and McIlroy skillfully portrays both landscape and people. Distance between places in the desert is a recurring notion, and the emotional distance between people mirrors the geographically imposed isolation. In the title story, the brief friendship that grows between a lonely Anglo rancher and a Native American ranch hand is a singularly healing episode in increasingly barren lives. In "The March of the Toys," an encounter at a party leads two vulnerable women to friendship, tentative romance, ultimate alienation, and the question, "How can a person cease being who she's always been?" The final story, "Builders," ends on a hopeful note, when, estranged during the building of their dream house, a family begins to reconnect. In many of the stories, promising relationships begin by chance, end in deceit and disappointment, yet leave characters transformed. Recommended for larger fiction collections.Eleanor Mitchell, Arizona State Univ. West, PhoenixCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.