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A faded film star, the genius who invented cocktail umbrellas, two colorful widows on a Florida holiday, a distorted travesty of a man in a secluded institution, a harmless but hapless stalker, lovers and haters, killers and birthers, Queen Victoria's stable lad, even Santa …
'The Shadow Cast' is a collection of twenty-two short stories … but a book debunking any claim that a whole cannot be greater than the sum of its parts. Each tale in Mike Broemmel's new anthology can proudly stand alone in the greatest tradition of story telling; but read in sequence his painstakingly ordered works pack the punch of an epic novel. They present a satisfyingly complete saga of stark, simple truth that is all but unique in the annals of fiction. People, places, periods develop and seamlessly intertwine, story-by-story. 'The Shadow Cast' is an insightful record of a reality we never realized existed before Broemmel. The shadow may sometimes represent shelter and escape, sometimes the umbrella that obscures so many of our quiet doings. The cast? The cast is you … you and the folks down the road apiece. It's about how you manage to share this world with him and her as earthbound companions, fellow mortals. A masterful work. Not since Steinbeck has an author dared tell life only as it is. Characters so real you expect them to come visit. |
