There's a certain wedge of the American South where mountains give way to idyllic college towns and tall tales give way to the ghosts that inspired them. It's the geographical confluence of truth and fiction, history and folklore, and Matthew Vollmer mines that rich terrain in Gateway to Paradise, a collection of short stories that follows disparate lives entangled in the Appalachians like vines of kudzu, tethered by secrets and stories.
"Downtime," the first piece in the book, signals Vollmer's style--a mélange of down-and-out personas with a splash of Dixie magic--like a flare. Following the loss of his wife, dentist Ted takes his lover and receptionist, Allison, to Gatlinburg, Tenn., where they intend to drink, screw and sight-see, away from the prying eyes of their small hometown. The plan's hitch arrives in the form of Ted's ex-wife, whose drowned, barnacled corpse follows him around the hotel, seducing him despite her clammy, mottled skin.
Vollmer's best stories have a ring of truth, despite their oddity. "The Visiting Writer" lacks the high stakes and whimsy of the stories that surround it, yet its uncanny sincerity, including the mediocre hors d'oeuvres served at a university cocktail party and a famous writer's peculiarities, reflect reality through an strange mirror. "Dog Lover" disturbs more than provokes (toward the story's end the title suddenly becomes quite literal), but the rest of the collection proves winsome. Gateway to Paradise heralds the arrival of a new voice rooted in place, a place whose eccentrics and eccentricities are almost stranger than fiction. --Linnie Greene, freelance writer