From Publishers Weekly
There are 103 stories in this small book, divided into six sections. No story is longer than two-and-a-half pages, and there are no named characters--they are merely identified as a mother, a minister, a grandfather and "the boys" of the subtitle, a gaggle of farm kids whose collective perspective is related in these snippets. The terse, reticent structure and tone of this collection--the prose is plain and unadorned--are perfectly suited to Heynen's homely paean to rural American life. Disengaged from any recognizable narrative, the moments recounted here--the instant when electrification first brightens a kitchen, the approach of a tornado, the death of an animal--possess a lonely, existential quality, as if, indeed, the story of which they were once a part is now gone. Yet what remains with the reader are the magical impressions of childhood. For example, in "Eye to Eye," the "youngest boy" sneaks into the pen where a pig is giving birth and stares right into the piglet's eye the moment it is born: a certain intelligence--and innocence--are mutually acknowledged in an instant, and the boy realizes he has been "somewhere no one else will ever have to know about." But for Heynen ( The Funeral Parlor ), the boy would be right.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The essence of American boys' practicality, perversity, and sweetness memorably captured in a hundred brief, reverberant tales of farm life, some reprinted from an earlier collection by poet Heynen (You Know What is Right, 1985). Divided into six parts, Heynen's stories catalogue the daily brutality and beauty that shape the character of ``the boys,'' five or so brothers and their friends roaming on their fathers' (``the men's'') hog and corn farms in some unspecified midwestern state. They help birth calves--saving the life of a heifer and her calf by cutting up a second unborn calf in utero and removing it, piece by piece, to free the first--and rescue dogs, whose tails they chop off in an effort to make the motley pups acceptable to their fathers. They steal a watermelon from a town woman's garden (``Gotcha'') and blame the man who sneaks up on them and turns them in: ``Good people don't crawl on their hands and knees through the tomatoes to catch boys stealing.'' In ``Dancing with Chickens,'' they sneak into the coops in the early morning and clap softly until the chickens start to follow the beat; then the boys dance with the chickens until ``they got dizzy or heard someone coming. They didn't want anyone to see them doing this. Dancing with chickens was the only dancing the boys ever did. How would someone watching know...they weren't just following?'' And in ``The Grandfather,'' the boys shoot a mourning dove whose cooing is preventing their well-loved cancer-stricken grandfather from resting and ``brought the dead bird inside and held it up for their grandfather. They extended their arms toward him, each of them holding part of the birds' wings between his fingers, so he could see that this gift was from all of them.'' The boys form a perfect chorus of cruelty and kindness--and Heynen is a Hemingway of farm life. Exquisite. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.