It's Not the Heat: Stories

At a wedding reception a woman encounters a lover, and an image of herself, she has not seen in more than twenty years. On a road-trip a father listens to the conversation of his two adolescent daughters and hears between the lines previously undetected clues to their changing identities. A man confronts the loss of his wife of many decades by recognizing a new means of communication and reunion. Disconcerted by the weirdly converging dreams and sightings of a boyhood acquaintance, an Episcopal priest searches for meaning among shifting shards of memory, chance, and intention. A retired couple establish a bond of trust with a neglected child and find themselves goaded into an unexpected future of perplexity and promise. All of these characters are poised on the brink of change-sometimes only vaguely understood, sometimes unmistakably life-altering and irreversible. In every case these changes afford a degree of revelation and make some urgent demand for new assessment, perspective, action. The ten stories in this collection by Hadley Hury are set primarily in the South, many in and around Memphis, and examine with tough wit and expansive spirit its people and the place. But like any good stories, they defy the limited focus of regionalism and explore the universal anatomies of love, vulnerability, loss, humor, and hope. Praise for Hury's The Edge of the Gulf-In Hury's engrossing suspense novel a deadly mystery combines with the greater mystery of the protagonist's loss and recovery to illustrate beautifully the resilience of the human spirit An assured debut. -Publishers WeeklyThis first novel offers complex characters, subtle intrigue, well-crafted prose, and a small-town, oceanfront ethos. -Library Journal a powerful work of psychological suspense.