The One-Room Schoolhouse: Stories about the Boys

There are 103 stories in this small book, divided into six sections. No story is longer than two-and-a-half pages, and there are no named characters--they are merely identified as a mother, a minister, a grandfather and ``the boys'' of the subtitle, a gaggle of farm kids whose collective perspective is related in these snippets. The terse, reticent structure and tone of this collection--the prose is plain and unadorned--are perfectly suited to Heynen's homely paean to rural American life. Disengaged from any recognizable narrative, the moments recounted here--the instant when electrification first brightens a kitchen, the approach of a tornado, the death of an animal--possess a lonely, existential quality, as if, indeed, the story of which they were once a part is now gone. Yet what remains with the reader are the magical impressions of childhood. For example, in ``Eye to Eye,'' the ``youngest boy'' sneaks into the pen where a pig is giving birth and stares right into the piglet's eye the moment it is born: a certain intelligence--and innocence--are mutually acknowledged in an instant, and the boy realizes he has been ``somewhere no one else will ever have to know about.'' But for Heynen ( The Funeral Parlor ), the boy would be right. (June)