All My Relations: Stories

Set against the landscape of the American Southwest, this collection of eight precisely observed stories offers a powerful and moving series of observations about love and relationships in the modern world. In the title tale, Milton, a Pima Indian, quits drinking and finds success as a ranch hand in the employ of a stubborn white cattle owner. But his sobriety alienates him from his friends, and his long-missed wife and son return only as Milton descends into a debilitating, dream-like illness. In ``Simplifying,'' Julia, a volunteer at the local zoo, finds renewed life in an affair with Philip, a 66 poet with brittle feet. In a line that has resonance for many of the characters here, Philip says: ``For my wife and me, making a baby would have implied too much optimism about our future.'' In ``Builders,'' a close-knit family implodes under the pressure of building their dream house, only to be reborn in the thinner, less burdensome air of Denver. Describing their reunion, McIlroy writes, ``Now they sat tensely in canvas-backed chairs stretched like slingshots. They talked cautiously, with encouragement, hoping for the return of pleasure.'' A winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, McIlroy writes with a spare elegance, consistently displaying the illuminating detail or the evocative description. His stories are grittily real, occasionally disturbing, filled with the breath of life. (June)