Still Waters: Five Stories

Still Waters: Five Stories was a Georgia Author of the Year nominee in the short fiction genre, and for good reason. This compilation of themed stories raises a voice in praise of courage through struggle. These stories of death and dying meet the reader in clear-eyed reality while supporting and proclaiming the need to endure. Brucie's style, simultaneously poetic and muscular, invites the reader into the lives of these characters with such ease that they immediately feel like cousins we have met for the first time. The story-telling is so deft, so masterful, that we don't want to put the book down, and upon finishing, we want to read each story again.

"Each story depends upon the truth of love in the human experience and how human surrender to that truth brings peace and justice to each of the protagonists." from the Introduction by Ron Hugar

Among these tales, you will enjoy a civil war story of the discovery of love, a tall-tale about the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, a story with a ghost in it, an immigrant end-of-life story, and the uplifting story of Kathleen and Robbie Merton, all told in the lyrical and poetic voice of the great traditional folk story tellers.

As the International Journal of Existential Literature reported, Brucie's characters embody the grace and wisdom of "ordinary people caught in the struggles of those small heroic moments we all must face when action demands courage and courage demands faith."

Libby Tucker, author of Campus Legends and Haunted American College Campuses, wrote that "These extraordinarily moving stories explore the intricacies of human suffering and joy. Thom Brucie writes with rare power and insight; his lyrical descriptions echo in the heart and mind of the reader."