Frederick Busch (1941–2006) was the recipient of many honors, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, a National Jewish Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award. The prolific author of sixteen novels and six collections of short stories, Busch is renowned for his writing’s emotional nuance and minimal, plainspoken style. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he lived most of his life in upstate New York, where he worked for forty years as a professor at Colgate University.
The opening story, "The Rescue Mission," and the closing story, "Sense of Direction," of this brilliant collection by the late Busch (The Night Inspector) aptly illustrate the search for love, hope, and meaning that propels his characters through their ordinary lives. Most of the men and women in these compelling stories either try to pluck others out of surging and swirling tides of personal misery ("The Rescue Mission," "Good To Go") or attempt to resurrect old passions and loves that formerly animated them ("One Last Time for Old Time's Sake," "The Barrens"). Disappointment, regret, anger, hope, and passion quicken Busch's parables of the ragged ways that people fall in and out of love. Busch's quirky yet dazzling prose-"they were old people in the cul-de-sac of distress"; "they were one more man and one more woman caught in somebody's story"-is worth the price of admission. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/06.]-Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
American letters endured a major loss in February 2006 with the sudden death of the author of North, The Night Inspector and 23 other books. Set in the present from the battlefields of Iraq (two stories: "Good to Go" and "Patrols") to upstate New York (where Busch taught for many years) these 15 works share a common theme of people trying to provide relief to those in physical, emotional and mental peril. In "One Last Time for Old Times' Sake," a married man tries to stop his lover from ending their affair so that she can nurse her dying husband. The recently widowed grandfather of a preschooler tries to recover his grandson's lost superhero cape and winds up in an encounter with the boy's teacher in "The Small Salvation." A woman hospitalized as a suicide risk, in "Metal Fatigue," challenges her father's notions of mercy during his visit. Some rescues are successful; others appear to fail; in many cases the rescuers are in the process of saving themselves. Together they offer an incisive examination of the idea of beneficence. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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