"Tony Bukoski is the ultimate chronicler of the Polish-American experience."—W. P. Kinsella

Polonaise Stories by Anthony Bukoski

"Bukoski's collection puts one in mind of the fictional cosmos Faulkner created in north Mississippi or Anderson's Winesburg. The Polish subculture of Superior is rendered in all its gritty grime and exuberance."—Gordon Weaver

The twelve stories in Bukoski's third collection are both a dirge and an homage to a passing way of life for the East End neighborhood of Superior, Wisconsin. "Hurry, our closing is imminent," a priest in the single remaining Catholic church exhorts a Polish émigré seaman at the start of a confession. Without a spiritual or economic focus, Superior's Polish American residents create new places to worship—in a roadside confessional manned by an entrepreneurial junkman, deep below the city's streets in the basement of middle-aged twin spinsters, in a seedy lakeshore cafe where reports of a long-sleeping youngster create a neighborhood tourist attraction.

Despite their failures and the crumbling of their world, Bukoski's characters survive with wry humor, dignity, and grace.

Praise for Children of Strangers (SMU, 1993)

"Bukoski is a sure-handed, lyrical writer with . . . a gentle sense of humor and a powerful empathy for the . . . dispirited people of a heretofore mostly silent culture."—New York Times Book Review

The grandson of Polish immigrants, ANTHONY BUKOSKI grew up in Superior, Wisconsin. He has published two prize-winning collections, Twelve Below Zero and Children of Strangers. Bukoski teaches English at the University of Wisconsin–Superior and lives in the country outside of town. In 1997 he was featured in the PBS video "A Sense of Place: A Portrait of Three Midwestern Writers."

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Polonaise
ISBN 0-87074-434-8
$19.95

6x9. 192 pp.
Fiction.

Publication Date: October 1998.

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