Jerry Gabriel delivers an unsentimental portrait of rural America in Drowned Boy, a collection of linked stories that reveals a world of brutality, beauty, and danger in the forgotten landscape of small-town basketball tournaments and family reunions. In "Boys Industrial School," two brothers track an escaped juvenile convict, while in the title novella, a young man and woman embark on a haphazard journey to find meaning in the death of a high-school classmate. Selected by Andrea Barrett for the 2008 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, these stories probe the fraught cusp of adulthood, the frustrations of escape and difference, and the emotional territory of disappointment—set in the hardscrabble borderlands where Appalachia meets the Midwest.

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From "Marauders"

We ordered a second round. Someone said we should be getting back and we all agreed, but none of us made a move toward the door. Terry Winston started to tell stories about his days as a Marauder, twenty years back.

"Paris was tough," he said. "A mean streak a mile long." His eyes lit up as he tried to retrieve that past so far behind him. He talked of a time when his knees were good, and of a game he once scored twenty-one points in. We listened like second-graders. He told tale after tale, about this or that boy—we knew all of them—and about Paris. One anecdote involved Paris, a boy named Chuck Wolf, and a full water bottle Paris had thrown across a gymnasium at the boy.

"It flew," Winston said, "right over his head and through one of the stained glass windows of this Catholic school's gym over in Chillicothe."

We all laughed at the image of Paris throwing a bottle at this boy, and then fell quiet as our laughs trailed off. Terry Winston shook his head.

"He'd scream bloody murder at us," he said. "Every minute of every game. He threatened us and insulted our manhood." He looked at each face there at the table.

"We never won a game," he admitted. "We did not win one game. Not ever." Mindy Hagan put her arm around him. He lowered his head and raised it again.

"But he would come into the locker room afterward and he would tell us how proud he was of us, and that he thanked God for us."

Winston looked to be on the verge of tears when Tad Phillips thought to order a bratwurst from the rotisserie from behind the bar, and salvaged the moment. None of us had eaten yet and so we all ordered bratwursts and more beers and listened to the general clatter as these things were delivered. Every one of us must have had a moment of clarity then as to what sort of people we were. We were not what any of us wanted to be. Eventually, it sunk in that we could not show our faces back at the gym.

Blurbs

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Winner of the 2008 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, selected by Andrea Barrett

A Barnes and Noble "Discover Great New Writers" Selection

"These (stories) are rust-belt blues, a vision of and lament for a past time and a swiftly changing place. They’re not showy—the language is plain, the tragedy muted, the comedy low-key and wry—but they stick in the mind. Ray Carver would recognize these characters and situations, as would poet Philip Levine. I like to think that they would share my appreciation for this fine first book, built slowly and carefully over some years, and worth the wait."

—from the Foreword by Andrea Barrett

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