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Brother Frank's Gospel Hour Stories by W.P. Kinsella |
These eleven stories continue the adventures of Silas Ermineskin and his sidekick Frank Fencepost, as Kinsella returns to the Cree Indian reserve in Hobbema, Alberta, where his cast of zany characters, last seen in The Fencepost Chronicles and The Miss Hobbema Pageant, is at its wry best.
Here Frank Fencepost, true to form as a fast-talking con artist, outwits the Alberta Supreme Court in a hilarious cattle-insemination case in "Bull." In the title story he becomes an evangelizing Robin Hood, turning the government-sponsored K-U-G-H radio show into a scheme to use listeners' donations to fund listeners' wishes (and incidentally line his pockets), and in "Miracle on Manitoba Street" he visits a Montana reserve where he carves a picture of the Virgin Mary on a derelict Frigidaire and convinces the local medicine woman it's a miracle—one worthy of an admission charge.
Not all the stories are humorous: "Dream Catcher" grapples with sexual violence when Silas's twelve-year-old sister is assaulted and Mad Etta, the community's four-hundred-pound medicine woman, provides a nightmare "cure" for the would-be rapist; "Ice Man" depicts gender discrimination, as Jason Twelve Trees fights to participate in a cooking competition despite his father's wish for him to become a mechanic; and "The Rain Birds" shows the consequences of the government's computer-driven corporate farms riding roughshod over the human and natural environment in western Canada.
Published here for the first time in the United States, this collection first appeared in Canada in 1994.
"A collection of gems."—Calgary Sun
"In equal parts, tender and funny as hell."—Toronto Sun
"Kinsella's talent draws from his understanding of human foibles—our collective willingness to be charmed or conned if it makes us feel better."—Quill and Quire
"Much of Brother Frank's Gospel Hour goes beyond skin color, searching the netherworlds of the human soul. It speaks of hope, challenge, implicit faith and self-navigated destiny."—Todd Kimberley, Calgary Herald
"This may well be Kinsella’s best to date."—Star Phoenix (Saskatoon)
W. P. KINSELLA is the author of several short story collections, including three reissued by SMU Press: Red Wolf, Red Wolf (1990), Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa (1993), and Go the Distance: Baseball Stories (1995), originally published as The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt. He is best known for his award-winning novel Shoeless Joe, which became the film Field of Dreams in 1989. A native Canadian, Kinsella divides his time between western Canada and California.
Brother Frank's Gospel Hour
ISBN 0-87074-398-8 cloth $22.50
ISBN 0-87074-399-6 paper $12.95
LC 96-34545. 5 1/2x8. 200 pp.
Fiction.
U.S. rights only
Publication Date: October 1996.
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