I'll Never Leave You

by H. E. Francis

Price $14.95 paper, 204 pages, trade paper 

ISBN 1-886157-47-2

I like the solid stories of H. E. Francis and the more experimental, “turned loose” writing that marbles the collection. There are haunting characters caught in the web of tight prose. There is a frequency of memorable lines: “Dark had absorbed the woods and they could see only themselves in the panes” and “Words are the last stand against oblivion.” It’s the relationship of characters, the fluid imagery, the lyric quality that holds the reader. The dog, Edge, in “I’ll Never Leave You,” the family dynamics in “The Battered Shore,” the stream of consciousness in “The Private Lives of Children,” the impact of “Watching Marie.” Yes, these are stories that don’t leave. --Diane Glancy, 2003 Judge, G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction

Nine moody stories loosely interconnected about families living in small towns on the Long Island shore....the best are small triumphs, finding ordinary warmth and complexity in the most challenging of circumstances. --Kirkus Reviews

H. E. Francis is the author of ten previous books, over two hundred stories, and numerous translations. His stories have been included in the Pushcart, O. Henry, and Best American Short Stories volumes. His book The Itinerary of Beggars won the Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction, and his book Naming Things was selected for the Illinois Short Fiction Series. He taught for many years at the University of Alabama and received three Fulbright fellowships to Argentina. He now divides his time between Hunstville, Alabama, and Madrid, Spain.