Ploughshares Fall 2019 - Edited by Ladette Randolph

It's fitting that I'm trying to write this review of the Fall 2019 edition of Ploughshares when the Winter 2020 is sitting on my TBR right now and today Spring 2020 arrived in the mail. I'm way behind with no hope of catching up on my book goals this year. This global pandemic thing has made it really hard for me to concentrate on reading - which is one reason why I enjoyed the Fall 2019 edition so much. The stories were on the longer side, but they also were short enough that I didn't get away from it completely and shut down.

This collection had so many gems, but let me start by saying the nonfiction essays in this one were really really good.  First, Danielle Spencer's Drifting Out to Infinity was about math essentially. I am an English major who does well with short columns of small numbers so most of the concepts discussed were really beyond me, even the one the author claimed simplified a very complicated concept about prime numbers. But the thing I liked the most about it was the imagination it sparked in me and the desire to know more. I googled. I even insisted my husband watch a movie with me, The Man Who Knew Infinity, based on the mention in the story. So yeah, when a nonfiction piece does this, it's well done.

To that end, Tracy Daugherty's fiction story, So Much Straw, also led me down a path reading into Thomas Merton, who I'd only heard of in passing (and I'm Catholic). Pope Francis once mentioned Merton as an American approaching sainthood. So I've added Merton's memoir to my reading list.

This is really the mark of good short stories. They may be short, but the worlds they open up and the imagination they invoke are limitless.

I should also mention Kiley Reid, who's new novel, Such a Fun Age is getting rave reviews, wrote an excellent story in this collection about a teacher assigning a student a history lesson regarding George Washington's Teeth and the teacher's own history becomes through an association with the student's mother.

Really so many stories were good in this collection on a humorous track, including Ian Stansel's The Calleri, which is more complicated than can be briefly explained but was darkly humorous. And Nancy Mays, The Pfeffermans about a middle class family concerned for their mother who through a close call medically develops an imaginary friend. And finally, Takbum Gyel's, Notes on the Pekingese about an office dog with a strong sense of ambition. Yep, you read that right.

Where else can such a collection exist? No where. That's why Ploughshares remains such a valued investment for me.

4/5 Stars.