Same Place, Same Things: Stories

Overview: Timothy Martin Gautreaux is a novelist and short story writer who lives in Hammond, Louisiana, where he is Writer in Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, Atlantic, Harper's, and GQ. His novel The Next Step in the Dance won the 1999 SEBA Book Award. His novel The Clearing won the 1999 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance SIBA Book Award and the 2003 Mid-South Independent Booksellers Association Award. He also won the 2005 John Dos Passos Prize. In his stunning debut collection, Tim Gautreaux chronicles the lives of "ordinary" people - a farmer on his porch, a woman fixing her tractor, a train engineer passing through a small town - who face extraordinary circumstances or decisions. The farmer has just learned he must raise his infant granddaughter; the woman is about to watch a helicopter land in her back field; the train engineer will cause a colossal disaster. Most of these stories are set in Louisiana, and some incorporate the customs and cadences of modern Cajun life. Many are about work and how people do their jobs, from radio announcers to pump repairmen, from bug exterminators to tugboat crews. . These are stories about real people, stories filled with heart and humor, event and consequence. With an unerring eye for detail and a pitch-perfect ear for language, Tim Gautreaux brings his characters to life in twelve perfectly crafted, beautifully told tales of love, redemption, and second chances. Same Place, Same Things resonates with the hope and possibility of everyday life. In this collection of stories, Tim Gautreaux chronicles the lives of "ordinary" people who face extraordinary circumstances and a farmer faced with the prospect of raising his infant granddaughter; a young man who falls in love with a voice on the radio; a train engineer who causes a colossal disaster. In stories filled with heart and humor, event and consequence, the customs and culture of Louisiana come to life in the hands of a writer who blends rare talent with an even more unusual humanity. Twelve stories on ordinary people set in Louisiana. The title piece is on a woman desperate to get away from her boring life, and in Waiting for the Evening News a drunk train driver causes a chemical spill