Books by Frank Soos

Even from upside-down in his recently flipped truck, Frank Soos reveals himself to be ruminative, grappling with the limitations of language to express the human condition. Moving quicklyskiing in the dark or taking long summer bike rides on Alaska highwaysSoos combines an active physical life with a dark and difficult interior existence, wrestling the full span of thinking and doing onto the page with surprising lightness. His meditations move from fly-fishing in dangerously swift Alaska rivers to memories of the liars and dirty-joke tellers of his small-town Virginia childhood, revealing insights in new encounters and old preoccupations. Soos writes about pain and despair, aging, his divorce, his fathers passing, regret, the loss of home, and the fear of death. But in the process of confronting these dark topics, he is full of wonder. As he writes at the end of an account of almost drowning, Bruised but whole, I was alive, alive, alive.

This collection of short stories has characters in the middle of their lives when things fall apart. Jobs, hopes, and marriages disintegrate while they seek strategies and explanations.

Even from upside-down in his recently flipped truck, Frank Soos reveals himself to be ruminative, grappling with the limitations of language to express the human condition. Moving quicklyΓÇöskiing in the dark or taking long summer bike rides on Alaska highwaysΓÇöSoos combines an active physical life with a dark and difficult interior existence, wrestling the full span of ΓÇ£thinking and doingΓÇ¥ onto the page with surprising lightness. His meditations move from fly-fishing in dangerously swift Alaska rivers to memories of the liars and dirty-joke tellers of his small-town Virginia childhood, revealing insights in new encounters and old preoccupations. Soos writes about pain and despair, aging, his divorce, his fatherΓÇÖs passing, regret, the loss of home, and the fear of death. But in the process of confronting these dark topics, he is full of wonder. As he writes at the end of an account of almost drowning, ΓÇ£Bruised but whole, I was alive, alive, alive.ΓÇ¥

After he was handed an old, broken-down bamboo fly rod, Frank Soos waited several years before he cautiously undertook its restoration. This enterprise became the central metaphor and the theme for the essays presented in this book. It contains full color paintaings by the Alaskan artist, Kesler Woodward.