Contagion and Other Stories

Mapping a literary space uniquely his own, Evenson's CONTAGION AND OTHER
STORIES pursues to a new level the crepescular and delirious
exploration begun in his acclaimed and controversial ALTMANN'S TONGUE.
In the O'Henry Award winning "Two Brothers," a minister breaks his leg
while his sons watch then refuses to call an ambulance, remaining
convinced even unto death that God will arrive to lift him up and make
him whole. The self-acclaimed language specialist of "The Polygamy of
Language" indiscriminately blends linguistics with murder.
"Contagion"
is a skewed retelling of the early history of barbed wire, which
interweaves metaphysics and the Western genre. "Watson's Boy" shows a
boy endlessly wandering the human equivalent of a conditioned response
box while the protagonist of "By Halves" finds himself trapped in a
relationship that may not exist. Throughout, Evenson's immaculate prose
draws us mercilessly up to confront troubled and troubling lives that,
astoundingly, are no less human than our own.