Spearwood, OR
A poet’s public reading shines a spotlight on her isolation. Robbers look to their former teacher for a chance at redemption. A painter of railroads stubbornly documents decline and abandonment. A Halloween festival is rooted in matters of life and death. Set in a fictional Pacific Northwest town, told through the gossip and grievances of its residents, Spearwood OR examines the impacts of place, inherited narratives, and generational traumas on a community in 72 very short stories. John Carr Walker’s vision of the new American west is funny and furious, desperate and demure, familiar on the surface yet deeply strange.
“Captures the tangled, sometimes troubling, often poignant complexity of a small town community.”
“A world where the strange and the ordinary are inextricably linked.”
“Profound, wise, and stubbornly hopeful. ”
“The only thing this whole town can agree on is they don’t approve. ”