cover image The End of the Class War

The End of the Class War

Catherine Brady. Calyx Books, $27.95 (239pp) ISBN 978-0-934971-67-6

The 14 interlinked stories in this moving collection are beautifully crafted snapshots of Irish immigrants to American cities (Chicago, San Francisco) in 1950. ""It's no mercy... seeing into the insides of things, into the secret ways by which the bones absorb shock and mend themselves... "" but Brady does it with compassion and joy. Her short fictions capture critical moments in the lives of the working-class women who absorb shocks, mend, go on. The opening tale introduces ""The Daley Girls,"" five sisters; their hard-working, hard-drinking, bewildered, enraged father, Joe; and their trapped, overworked, brutalized and heroic mother, Maureen. ""Don't Walk,"" portrays Nora, the useful maiden aunt, who gave up her Ph.D., the engine of her escape, to help her mother care for her disabled father as she now helps her sister Maureen care for her children. In ""Rumpelstiltskin,"" the damaged, crippled vets in the VA hospital long for the freedom of death, while in ""Lives of the Saints,"" Danny, age seven, fights against the cruel restraints of spina bifida while his mother takes on other hopeless causes, knowing ""suffering brings us closer to God."" The overwhelming need to escape despair may be depressing, but these stories light the family's churning characters in full motion--they are jubilant, indomitable. Later, in ""Home Movies"" and ""Driving,"" the Daley girls have grown up, following the current into middle-class America, no longer subject to the daily humiliations of the working-class poor. The final story presents three generations of women closely perceived, as they battle the cycle of life that is particularly female, burdened, courageous, kind and human. Agent, Jandy Nelson, Manus & Associates Literary Agency. (June)