I sat down at a quarter past midnight and started reading this, though what I really wanted to do was take a shower and wash off the plaster dust that is sticking to the sweat from a humid day in Brooklyn after changing a light fixture earlier. But the fiction won out over the body grime, and I stayed put until I finished. My wife is Chinese, our story is the basis of my first novel. She has also sometimes wondered whether she traded up in staying here, to be with me. A friend of mine built a house in a small valley in West Virginia; I can just imagine the waste pouring down from one of the hills around it and rushing along the muddy road. Great job all around, good luck with the book.
Tony Alterman replied on Sat, 08/01/2009 - 10:22pm
What a heart-rending but uplifting story, with such honesty and depth. I won't forget these people. Croley writes powerfully, a kind of emotional chiaroscuro, in the darkness of the sludge and the light of human hope.
I sat down at a quarter past midnight and started reading this, though what I really wanted to do was take a shower and wash off the plaster dust that is sticking to the sweat from a humid day in Brooklyn after changing a light fixture earlier. But the fiction won out over the body grime, and I stayed put until I finished. My wife is Chinese, our story is the basis of my first novel. She has also sometimes wondered whether she traded up in staying here, to be with me. A friend of mine built a house in a small valley in West Virginia; I can just imagine the waste pouring down from one of the hills around it and rushing along the muddy road. Great job all around, good luck with the book.
What a heart-rending but uplifting story, with such honesty and depth. I won't forget these people. Croley writes powerfully, a kind of emotional chiaroscuro, in the darkness of the sludge and the light of human hope.
Terrific story!
Excellent story. Worth reading a second and third time.