Float Up, Sing Down: Stories - Hardcover

by Laird Hunt (Author)

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

Laird Hunt's masterful story collection capturing one summer's day in the Indiana community where the beloved National Book Award Finalist Zorrie bloomed.

Candy Wilson has forgotten to buy the paprika. Turner Davis needs to get his zinnias in. Della Dorner told her mother she was going to the Galaxy Swirl, but that's not where she's really headed on her new Schwinn five-speed.

Float Up, Sing Down is the story of a single day. But in that day, how much teeming life! The residents of this rural town have their routines, their preferences, their joys, grudges, and regrets. Gossip is paramount. Lives are entwined. Retired sheriffs climb corn bins and muse on lost love, French teachers throw firecrackers out of barn windows, and teenagers borrow motorcycles to ride the back roads.

Each of the fourteen stories of Float Up, Sing Down follows one character's day in the life in one of Hunt's most beloved and enduring landscapes. In the tradition of Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Elizabeth Strout, and Edward P. Jones, this is a symphony of souls, a masterful portrait of both loneliness and community by one of our great limners of American experience.

Author Biography

Laird Hunt's most recent novel, Zorrie, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Hunt has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfield--Wolf Award for Fiction, the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, and Italy's Bridge Award. He teaches in the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University and lives in Providence.