Firesticks

"There was the darkness of a dream again. And in that darkness, the burning firesticks the men used to carry from the holy Keetowah fire to light the smaller fires in the cabins. It had been a yearly celebration. Light of darkness. New life from ashes...But now we had lost our ceremonies". So dreams Turle in the novella that moves through the shorter prose pieces that make up this collection. Incorporating elements of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry, Diane Glancy's stories are lyrical yet dawn to earth, often tough and gritty. Experimental, sometimes surreal in form, they nevertheess concern people who are very real - a color-blind young boy who watches planes in flight and imagines color; a shy stamp collector who speculates that he and his friend, like the stamps, could go anywhere via the U.S. Post Office; an old woman who dies in the cold landscape of her inner life but retains her vision; a cynical woman reluctant to take risks with yet another traveling man. In spite of life's hard realities, Firesticks is filled with humor and hope and a stitching together of cultures, as the cross-blood characters search for their identities. The stories are unified by the theme of transformation through flight, by means of planes and aviators, birds, postage stamps, balloons, shooting stars, the constellations, and the sky itself. Ultimately, Glancy's stories, or firesticks, are like prayers offered up to heaven, and the words themselves become, not a way to separate, but a way to speak things into existence.