{"product_id":"goodnight-silky-sullivan-9780826210098","title":"Goodnight Silky Sullivan","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Laurie Alberts command of prose is exceptional  her characterizations vivid and compelling \" said the Detroit Free Press of her first book. \"Alberts has most certainly established herself as an author from whom great things may be expected.\" In this  her second book of fiction  Alberts explores the lives of a wide range of characters seeking to reinvent themselves in an effort to escape the past - or at least to understand it. In \"Between Revolutions \" which Publishers Weekly calls a \"hapless  hopeless yet exhilarating story \" Grisha  a frustrated Soviet teacher in Leningrad  is consumed by long-suppressed dreams of freedom when he begins a romance with an American exchange teacher. First drawn to her by a lust for information  he is soon consumed with desire: \"He wanted to suck every drop of juice from her mysterious foreign life.\" In another story set in Russia  Kate  an American  is beguiled by the danger of an affair with a Russian ex-seaman that might ennoble her own humdrum existence. Not loving Kolya completely  but wanting desperately to be loved by him  Kate finally realizes that their lives and their cultures have conspired to keep them apart. In the title story of the collection  a young woman  Allie  takes stock of her life  trying to come to terms with a tough  tormented  sometimes explosive father whose only moment of tenderness is expressed by invoking the name of a racehorse as he strokes his daughters silky mane. In the beautiful  bittersweet story \"Blood Sand \" a distraught investment analyst flees New York for a new and equally difficult life of poverty in a brilliantly rendered rural New Mexico. There  among the pinons and junipers  he will learn the hard lessons of forgiveness. Whether bringing to life the quotidian details of the last days of Brezhnevs Russia  the grubby poverty of dying New England mill towns  or the brilliant  harsh sun of New Mexico mesas  Alberts writes with an easy grace that belies the depth of these compelling tales.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67904837845045,"sku":"ByrdShop_0826210090","price":62.74,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780826210098.jpg?v=1793853015","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/goodnight-silky-sullivan-9780826210098","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}