Book Reviews and More: That Elusive Story

Friday, 9 December 2005

That Elusive Story

Haunting, that is the only way I can describe the short story. I read a short story years ago, back in the late 80's I had a collection of short Catholic Fiction, I read it ad enjoyed it, but there was a particular story that has haunted me. I can only describe it that way. Yet I no longer had the book. It was lent out and not returned back in the early 90'’s and yet this story would come to mind again and again over the years. I did not know the author of the story, the editor of the book, all I could remember was that the book had a black cover with yellow writing.

A few weeks ago I was at a retreat at Mount Carmel Monastery in Niagara Falls, and this story came to mind again. So I decided to try and find it. I did searches on Amazon.ca and Chapters.ca and tried to find the book. I searched 'Catholic' and 'fiction' also 'Catholic' and 'Short Story' and tried many other searches. Nothing matched what I remembered but there was a book from 1984 that they did not have a cover image for The Substance of Things Hoped For edited by John Breslin S.J. so I interlibrary loaned the book at school, and found the story I was looking for. It was called, The Warm Sand by J. F. Powers and was very much what I remembered. I also found out that it had been made into a novel that won the National Book award in 1968 so I am now reading the book Wheat That Springeth Green of which the short story is chapter 6 in the book almost exactly. I have posted the Short Story as the post before this one and would love your take on it. I have my prie-dieu and at times it has been used, but not as much as it should. Check out the story and tell me what you think.

The Warm Sand (Posted With Permission)