The Peripatetic Coffin, Ethan Rutherford's debut collection of short stories, is a keeper. His work creeps up on you when you're not looking, like the title story. The coffin in question is the Civil War-era submarine H. L. Hunley: 40 metallic feet long, with a four-foot beam and a cabin height of four feet, it is the Confederacy's secret savior. With a bomb attached to the bow, it will, with underwater stealth, destroy the Union ships blockading Charleston harbor. Narrated by Ward Lumpkin, who mans the second crank station, the tale is one of honor, courage and blind faith in a "contraption that has killed thirteen men, including its inventor, on test runs alone." Their night attack on the USS Housatonic succeeds, but the sub never makes it back to port. In the dark, as the water rises, Ward wonders if they were "but a spectacle of self-defeat."
In "A Mugging," a middle-aged couple is mugged at night. Charles is punched in the face; the first time ever. Quietly, painfully, Rutherford reveals the "unsettling" effects of the incident. "Summer Boys," about two inseparable fifth-graders, opens all nostalgic: the joys of youth, skateboarding, adventures. Then, as with "A Mugging," the story takes a turn down a dark corridor.
Add two other beautifully rendered nautical tales, a whimsical, absurdist story about a summer camp where campers die trying to retrieve a stolen mascot moose head, a powerful portrait about a son gone wrong and its devastating effect on the family and, to round things out, ruminations on lost love and a sick alpaca, and you've got a revelatory feast of storytelling. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher