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The Natural Order of Things
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Comprised of 15
interconnected stories, The Natural Order of Things, is properly thought of as a novel in the tradition of
Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio or
John Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven ― but with a gothic sensibility. The novel concerns
the adventures and exploits of a small group of students, teachers, employees,
and priests at a Jesuit prep school in a dying industrial city. Its stories
harbor star quarterbacks who sabotage important games, the head coach with a gambling
addiction wagering on his own team, an elderly priest suffering from acute
memory loss who dabbles in heretical beliefs, and others who swim against
the tides of society's proscribed roles. "The Black Death of Gentile
da Foligno" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by author Thomas E.
Kennedy. Another story, "Uncreated Creatures," was nominated for a
StorySouth Million Writers Award by the editor of The Stickman Review. A third story, "The Spy" won second prize for
the Lorain County/Ohio Arts Council Award, judged by Nancy Zafris, editor of The
Kenyon Review.
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Publishers
Weekly said of The Natural
Order of Things in a starred review
(October 15): Keating toys with narrative chronology in this debut collection
of interwoven stories that follows the lives of several “reprobates who have
descended into... Hades.” At the center of an unnamed, ruined city of American
industry thrives, tumorlike, a Jesuit high school and the Zanzibar Towers and
Gardens, a flophouse where both students and alums slum it with prostitutes. In
the opening story, “Vigil,” students have gathered at the Zanzibar to celebrate
Halloween and the next day’s big football game with kegs of beer they stole
from a senile priest in the final story, “Gehenna,” that was delivered in the
second story, “Box,” by the father of star quarterback Frank “the Minotaur”
McSweeney. “I’m counting on you. We all are,” says the Minotaur’s father, but
the day of the big game, as in all the connected stories, we find out just how
big a letdown everyone in this life can be. Story by story, the collection
circumnavigates suffering—someone lights the homeless on fire at night; a
merchant marine boxes up a man to ship him overseas; priests humiliate and
shame their students, while one teacher loves them too much—in a place where
most of its inhabitants “would rather gamble on a human life than try to save
one."
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