Most of the stories in The Proper Words for Sin, Gary Fincke's new collection, are set in the large swath of Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Fincke, who has published 24 books of short fiction, poetry and nonfiction, has captured, with both honesty and empathy, the mix of stubbornness and stoicism that characterizes this region.
Disaster and tragedy are never far away in these 11 stories. In "The Fierceness of Need," a high school English teacher and his pregnant wife battle over whether they will return to their home in the shadow of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant after its partial meltdown, while their neighbor struggles to cope with his daughter's eating disorder. "Somebody Somewhere Else," the story that concludes the book, is by far its most powerful. Set in Centralia, where an underground mine fire has burned for more than 50 years, it focuses on one of the handful of people remaining in the hollowed-out community, a recently retired man who thinks he's been a witness to the abduction of a young girl.
Although it wouldn't be accurate to characterize any of his stories as truly comic, Fincke seasons them with memorably odd characters such as the woman in "The Out-of-Sorts" who holds police officers at bay by brandishing poisonous snakes. As strange as these characters may seem, Fincke never treats them as objects of ridicule.
The stories in this collection are more likely to evoke a knowing nod than a jolt of surprise. Readers who enjoy the gritty, realistic short stories of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff will find themselves comfortably at home in the work of Gary Fincke. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer