The Writer and the Woodchuck

Set along the crooked backroads of Vermont-where a giant hand seems to wave you onward-The Writer and the Woodchuck: Five Stories and a Novella gathers a cast of unforgettable characters whose lives intersect in ways both humorous and elegiac.

From kissing cousins and a greedy sister to a rundown woodchuck and a dying sculptor surrounded by his motley circle of friends, Handelman's fiction maps the emotional terrain of a hardscrabble rural community. These are stories of flatlanders and old-timers, of infatuation and rivalry, of exile and belonging--each one illuminating the mysterious arrivals at a funeral that becomes the spiritual crossroads of the collection.

Energetic, warmly offbeat, and formally inventive, this collection has drawn comparisons to the regional depth of Annie Proulx, the emotional acuity of Anne Patchett, and the small-town resonance of Winesburg, Ohio. With narrative tension and keen psychological insight, Handelman explores how economic pressures, private longings, and the stubborn pull of place shape the fragile bonds between us.

By turns comic and searching, earthy and sophisticated, The Writer and the Woodchuck is a vivid portrait of a beloved community... and of the writer determined to understand his place within it.