Uncommon & Other Stories

The broad range of characters in William Cass's moving second short story collection, Uncommon & Other Stories, all share a fascination with right action-how we know it, when we know it, and what that knowledge asks of us-in real time or in retrospect. Cass's stories are deeply rooted in the particularities of daily life and of nature-whether how to run a small inn in Arizona, harvest hay in Montana, mend an old woman's decaying picket fence, feed oneself through a stomach tube, teach an abandoned child how to garden, rob your neighbors' vacation homes. Even in regret, there is a bracing affirmation, however delayed, that other choices were possible, and that we are graced by this knowledge, however uncomfortable it may also be. As one narrator explains, "Now as I enter this final chapter of life, I'm struck at how much of it has been made up of encounters and events like those-many random and seemingly small, some involving choices or control and others not-and how their meaning remains mysterious, indelible, confounding, fervent."