Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing: Stories [Paperback]

Lydia Peelle has given us a collection of stories so artfully constructed and deeply imagined they read like classics. It marks the beginning of what will surely be a long and beautiful career. —Ann Patchett

InReasons for and Advantages of Breathing, Lydia Peelle brings together eight brilliant stories—two of which won Pushcart Prizes and one of which won an O. Henry Prize—that peer straight into the human heart. In startling and original prose, she examines lives derailed by the loss of a vital connection to the natural world.

Reasons for and Advantages of Breathingconveys an almost Faulknerian ache for the pre-modern South, for a landscape and a way of life lost to the ravages of money and technology.

“A collection of stories so artfully constructed and deeply imagined they read like classics. It marks the beginning of what will surely be a long and beautiful career.”—Ann Patchett, author ofBel Canto and Run

With this first book of fiction, a gifted young  writer brings together eight superbly crafted stories that peer deeply into the human heart, exploring lives derailed by the loss of a vital connection to the land and to the natural world of which they are a part.

“Mule Killers” evokes the end of an era and of a grandfather’s dreams when he decides to replace animal power on his farm with tractors. Two restless young girls in “Sweethearts of the Rodeo” live out their last summer of innocence, riding ponies recklessly and spying on their boss and the wealthy women who visit him. In “Phantom Pain,” the Tennessee woods are a sliver of what they once were, men now hunt with GPS and cell phones, and the rumor of a dangerous panther on the loose stirs up a small town. 

An unexpected vision of the beauty and mystery of life redeems the darkest moments in this stellar debut collection, a book that readers will lóS