When We Were Hardcore

Linda Michel-Cassidy's stories are born of the mountain areas in the American Southwest, and they depict the lesser-known lives of characters who discover, reckon with, and often seek to escape the mostly rural landscapes that made them. In As Happy as I Ever Was, the narrator is dropped into the rural Southwest, on a road trip engineered by her cousin. When they become separated, the narrator eventually tumbles into a sort of eco-mini-cult. One of the folks with whom she ends up living the off-grid lifestyle is out there looking for her missing brother, whom the narrator conjures into an almost physical presence. She is unsure of what she is looking for, but finds her time out in the scrub closer to salvation than was her cloistered suburban upbringing. As utopias always do, the undersides reveal themselves in curious ways. In When We Were Hardcore, a nouveau-comfortable couple move to a picturesque rural northern New Mexico hamlet. Uneasiness with the place and with each other surfaces when a bear takes up residence just outside. The bear encamps while the couple's anxiety grows. Meanwhile, questions about the couple's new neighbors abound, especially regarding whether the elderly Hispanic woman nextdoor may or may not be home. The couple's lack of knowledge about their own surroundings leads to multiple surprising disasters. The Tides Were Within Him is set on a houseboat in California, but has its origin in the high mountain desert. After a landlocked childhood spent longing for the sea, Ed joins the navy, and upon retirement, moves to a houseboat to captain booze cruises. After a time of aloneness, he becomes involved with Cindy, who didn't realize people actually lived on boats and tried to force Ed to a less odd (to her), land-based life. This doesn't work at all, yet when they split, Ed turns Cindy into an idealized Cindy and her new local celeb boyfriend into an anti-hero. Soon it Will Be Summer is set in a small-but-steep old-school style ski town. The narrator, Ez, and his sister, parentless, raised themselves in their mother's old double-wide. Willow and Ez are locally-known freeskiers, and Ez works as a lifty and later, a patroller. He is a stellar student and is being encouraged to get out of the only place he knows to "save himself." As he decides to make his exit, his sister becomes pregnant, and plans to raise her baby alone. Meanwhile, Ez's best buddy and coworker, Slice, loves his life here, never wanting for the larger world. Michel-Cassidy explores what it means to be a known entity in a small town, the love of the outdoors (and snow), that there are so many different kinds of comfort, and whether there is such a thing as escape. Far from the glitz of the Santa Fe Plaza or the showy Saguaro Cacti of the borderlands, these characters hardfight their way towards just getting by.