Compiled by The Bedford Citizen
Don’t let the title of this month’s contribution from local author S. Stuart Liss fool you…”Sugaring Time” is not a sweet tale. Our first glimpse of the main character, Micah Gendron, finds him in a desperate slog on an old Vermont logging road carrying his wounded teen-age son, Luke, “spread-eagled across his back like and shoulders like a dead buck…” A father-son hunting trip appears to have become a replay of Micah’s failed mission while serving in Desert Storm; a tragedy that has shaped his life ever since. And it’s been a hard scrabble life lived in a trailer on the side of a Vermont mountain with his wife, son, and daughter. Micah wants more for them, and the children, particularly, want more for themselves – but there are few roads out. This haunting story asks a provocative question: how far would you go to protect the children you love?
“Sugaring Time” is the title story of a collection by Liss set in a location based on Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. The collection was a finalist for the Bakeless Prize for Fiction sponsored by the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, and was previously published in the South Dakota Review.
Click to read Sugaring Time or to learn more about Liss’s work.
In case you missed Liss’s previously posted short stories:
- January, 2015 – Rain Delay
- February, 2015 – Another Flight of Stairs
Loading ...
