Description
Each of the twelve stories in A Twilight Reel chronicles a transformation — loss, self-discovery, renewal — among the inhabitants of the fictional town of Runion, NC.
A preacher held at knifepoint in a stranger’s cabin, another who absconds with his church’s funds and the wife of a parishioner; an elderly woman who slowly goes mad as she freezes to death; a renowned fiddler who returns home to die of AIDS; a gravedigger more comfortable with the dead than the living …
Sinful or righteous, imbued with hope or beyond redemption, each of these memorable characters struggles to endure, survive, or triumph over unplanned encounters with the people, forgotten or remembered, admired or scorned, who beset their lives.
These narrative threads are masterfully woven into the tapestry that is A Twilight Reel — a book full of surprises, dark fears, and unexpected humor, that echoes and distills the travails of any people, in any place.
Feathered Quill WINNER 2022
This new collection has been called “pure Joycean,” a “symphonic, nuanced portrayal of our contemporary Southern Highlands,” and “an extraordinary collection from an extraordinary writer.”
Its twelve interrelated tales are set over the course of a year—1999, as Y2K approaches and the world of Runion faces its own tumultuous changes. Like Thomas Wolfe’s Altamont, Runion stands in for places Cody grew up in and knows as only a native son can. Here he presents a vivid portrait of a community in an age of rapid change, learning how to understand and embrace the new despite the frequent pain and fear of the transition.
The stories
In the opening tale, a local preacher is taken captive by a fallen predecessor and struggles to escape before his own sins bring him down as well. As the winter progresses, an elderly woman inches closer to madness, and murder, as the freezing cold brings her inexorably closer to death.
In other stories, a music professor worries about his new life if he and his lover are the only gay men in a rural college town; and neighbors watch with trepidation as a failed church is prepared for a new, unsettling role—as a mosque for the area’s small but growing Islamic community.
Over the summer, a conservative local business owner faces the revelations that his own son, a young musician who left long before, is gay and HIV-positive—and has come home at last, but only to die. Months later, after vigilantes have burned him in effigy, the young fiddler uses his last burst of energy to give an impromptu farewell performance at the local drive-in theater—which, like him, is facing its imminent demise.
The autumn sees a widower rekindles dreams he once had of Marilyn Monroe, and a portrait of small-town death and birth emerges through visions of the dead that relentlessly visit a simple-minded gravedigger. Finally, as the year comes to an end and her last shift ends, a university custodian contemplates abandoning her husband and her small-town life in favor of stepping out into a world anxious with Y2K fears.
It’s no wonder that Robert Morgan (Chasing the North Star) says that “Cody’s is one of the most authentic and inspired voices in contemporary Appalachian fiction” who “speaks for both the region and the world beyond.” Or that Linda Parsons (Candescent) calls him “the masterful caller of the reel, leading us into mystery, time, a little magic realism, and possibly redemption—ever mindful of the living and the dead.”
And what greater praise can a writer achieve than these words from fellow Appalachian writer Leah Hampton:
What wonderful stories these are, rooted in mountains I know so well! Cody blends traditional and modern elements, wry humor, spooky darkness, and his intimate knowledge of the region to bring us a deftly rendered Appalachian story cycle…. This is a real gem.
A Twilight Reel is available now through bookstores everywhere, or through online retailers.
