Skin

Turning loose a Midwestern species of magical realism on a small, God-haunted town in Kansas, Kellie Wells charms strangeness and wonder from what might be mistaken for ＂ordinary＂ life. Here is Martin LeFavor, convinced his father has been nabbed by a solicitous band of aliens in desperate need of skin; Charlotte McCorkle, a vexed visionary who believes she has helped her husband escape the flesh; Zero Loomis, plagued by sacrificial angels, the memory of his father, and a shadowy sexual identity; his sister Rachel, an amateur masseuse determined to settle accounts with the past, in particular with her lovingly violent father; Ruby Tuesday, Rachel’s daughter, a budding oracle, the embodiment of possibility and prey to history; and, holding this tilted cosmos together, fifteen-year-old Ivy Engel, who carefully measures the borders of Self, advocates for neighborhood bats, and frets about the health of her friend Duncan, his harrowed body mapped and perhaps ravaged by subcutaneous scars. What happens when the spirit exceeds the limits of the skin? More troubling yet, what happens if it doesn’t? These are the questions the inhabitants of What Cheer, Kansas, must finally face as their paths cross and recross in an ever more intriguing--and perhaps liberating--puzzle.

Kellie Wells is an assistant professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. Her collection of short fiction, Compression Scars, won the 2001 Flannery O’Connor Award from the University of Georgia Press and the 2003 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award.