Little Bluestem- Stories from Rural America
Brian E. Backstrand
Reviewed by Barb Radmore
In this collection of short stories Brian E. Backstrand has put
together a series of vignettes of people, time and place in rural
America. It is the people who populate this book that capture the
heart of an America that is fading into our history. The people
who live and love, grow ill and die, work and play in the fields, barns
and houses of a passing time. It is not the large events in our lives
he examines, it is the small evolution of the world going by.
In The Haybine a "part time
preacher man, part time farmer" considers a glimpse of his past while
trying to unbind his haybine on a Sunday morning. He remembers working
with his uncle as a child who explains "there's a dance to be
done...a hay dance." He has continued the dance, the ever challenging
work of haying "his solitary battle. He sees the Biblical snakes
of history in the metal snake of wire that binds his machinery.
He watches as, when is haybine is fixed, his "path made a trail in the
sea of the grass, a temporary path which marked his place in time."
In Side Delivery a man sees
the passage of time in the death of an old time farmer. He met the
farmer when he bought a hay rake from him, for only forty dollars even
though it was worth much more. The old farmer just "wanted to make sure
it would be used and worked on and kept right." There, in a shed
where "inside, time sort of stood still and watched," they
transact a piece of their lives. After the man's death he stops by the
estate sale of his belongings. There the pieces of a life become prizes
to the highest bidders, sold for money not for use or worth.
Ribbons is a man on his
wedding day, in his one good suit, preparing for this wedding, a second
one for him. It is a small wedding at his house, a celebration with
family and friends. A story of ribbons, "ribbons in the wind" setting
him free with the memories of his loved first wife, ribbons of
green (the color of hope) and gold (the color of riches)
everywhere as decoration for this wedding and ribbons as the road to
his future. A gentle story of a man looking happily to a beginning as
he honors his past. "It was a life they had lived, and it was more life
they were choosing."
Each of the pieces of short fiction examines a slice of our progress as
a people and as a nation. The writing of Backstrand reflects the gentle
winds that blow over his characters' beloved farms and crops, the style
is both poetic and practical. He uses everyday events of fishing,
broken engines, horses and jobs to portray the ever changing face of
humanity. He lets the voices of the past speak freely to the present.
It is a book that deserves discussion, the sharing of memories and
hopes.
