Looking Through A Window Author Gives Us The Satisfaction Of Watching Others Persevere

“Late Summer Break” by Ann B. Knox (Papier Mache, $9, 158 pages)

Relationships can sometimes be loud and complicated and painful. Reading about relationships is like watching an argument through a window: You want to look away and not hear the shouting, but the temptation is strong to see the story unfold to its conclusion.

“Late Summer Break,” a collection of 14 short stories by Ann B. Knox, is that window through which readers can see human interaction with all of its messiness. The intense and often volatile relationships juxtaposed with a rural backdrop lend dramatic power to Knox’s writing.

Knox uses dialogue to move the stories along at just the right pace, capturing the intonations, the tensity and the straining of the voices.

It was a dry year, the yarrow and early goldenrod along the road already dim with dust. From time to time (Ella) would glance down at the baby blanket she was knitting. Janice was expecting again.

“Land’s parched,” Howard said.

“Clover’s dying back. They’re late cutting,” she said.

“They’ll make out,” he said. “People do.”

Knox set a high standard for writing with the story for which the book was named. “Late Summer Break” is a simple story of an older farming couple during an annual weekend vacation on the Eastern Shore: They talked and floated, neither of them moving. Ella listened to the pauses, the time it took to reach back and circle a patched leak, a painted door, a summer picnic. Each thing they spoke of trailed threads fine and tough as cobwebs. Then Howard shifted a little, his arm pressed against her, pulled back and pressed in again. He squeezed her hand.

“Hey. My girl.”

With her stories of farm boys coming of age, of people feeling trapped in isolated relationships, of parents letting go, Knox allows us to look through the window and witness the pain and the struggle to forge ways of living together and finding a sort of peace in the sense of place.

The reward of reading Knox’s stories is simply watching people persevere day in and day out and find, if not a joy, at least the satisfaction of participating in whatever life fate handed them.