Blissful: and Other Stories

This gathering of stories straddles the borderland between realism and absurdism, telling true tall tales of lightning strikes, deadly pranks, mixed luggage, mysterious encounters in a Zen center, a faith healer down on his luck, all in the ragged pursuit of love, where humor guards the bridge between the sound heart and lunacy.PRAISE FOR Blissful And Other StoriesSteven Huff is a master stylist and an American original. He has traveled the winding roads to the base of the human heart, mapping them through every strange and delirious curve. What a pleasure to be along for the ride. --Jedediah Berry, author of The Manual of DetectionA cornucopia of marvelous and various Americana. Huff's fictions sometimes shock, never cheat, always instruct, and persist in the memory, as real as the best and worst days of our lives. --Sterling Watson, author of Sweet Dream BabyHuff's characters occupy the edges, the rich ecotones between city and rural, wealthy and poor, native and wandering, needy and full. They are also buffeted by the fates, living and dying not by chance but as organized by some all-seeing, -knowing, -powerful hand with a sardonic sense of irony and humor. --Stephen Lewandowski, author of Under Foot