It looks like all of us will make it through another spring.
I look at the heap of wood, knowing that winters and woodpiles and lives never come out exactly even; but the red and golden fir is beautiful to see. Young creatures are beautiful. I watch the kid and pup. The kid throws a stick. The pup knows exactly what to do. It’s easy to understand why Sarah Jane goes crazy, but I’m not sure my reasons and her reasons match.
About the Authors
Jack Cady (1932-2004) won the Atlantic Monthly “First” award in 1965 for his story, “The Burning.” He continued writing and authored nearly a dozen novels, one book of critical analysis of American literature, and more than fifty short stories. Over the course of his literary career, he won the Iowa Prize for Short Fiction, the National Literary Anthology Award, the Washington State Governor’s Award, the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award.
Prior to a lengthy career in education, Jack worked as a tree high climber, a Coast Guard seaman, an auctioneer, and a long-distance truck driver. He held teaching positions at the University of Washington, Clarion College, Knox College, the University of Alaska at Sitka, and Pacific Lutheran University. He spent many years living in Port Townsend, Washington.
Resurrection House, through its Underland Press imprint, is publishing a comprehensive retrospective of his work in a project called The Cady Collection.
Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts in 1970, but has spent most of his life in the South where he studied literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the University of New Orleans. In addition to writing, he’s been a cook on oil rigs and barges, a bouncer at a strip club, and a bartender in New Orleans. His first collection, North American Lake Monsters from Small Beer Press, won the Shirley Jackson Award, and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards.
Praise for Jack Cady
An exceptional writer.
[Jack Cady is] a lasting voice in modern American literature.
Jack Cady’s knack for golden sentences is an alchemy any other writer has to admire.
Jack Cady is above all, a writer of great, unmistakable integrity and profound feeling. He never fakes it or coasts, and behind every one of his sentences is an emotional freight that bends it both outward, toward the reader, and inward, back to the source.
A writer whose words reverberate with human insight.
His structural control and the laconic richness of his style establish Cady in the front ranks of contemporary writers.
When Cady settles into yarn-spinning, his stories have the humor and comfortable mastery of Faulkner or Steinbeck.
The Cady Collection
The Hauntings of Hood Canal
Inagehi
The Jonah Watch
McDowell’s Ghost
The Man Who Could Make Things Vanish
The Off Season
Singleton
Street
Dark Dreaming [with Carol Orlock, as Pat Franklin]
Embrace of the Wolf [with Carol Orlock, as Pat Franklin]
Phantoms
Fathoms
Ephemera
The American Writer
Copyright
The Hauntings of Hood Canal is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used in an absolutely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by the Estate of Jack Cady
Introduction © 2016 Nathan Ballingrud
All rights reserved, which means that no portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is U026, and it has an ISBN of 978-1-63023-034-0.
This book was printed in the United States of America, and it is published by Underland Press, an imprint of Resurrection House (Puyallup, WA).
Always before, bad men took the hint.
Series Cover Design and Art Direction by Jennifer Tough
Cover Layout by Darin Bradley
Book Design by Aaron Leis
Collection Editorial Direction by Mark Teppo
First Underland Press edition: June 2016.
The first edition of this novel was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2001. “Welcome Sweet Springtime” first appeared in Connecting: Twenty Prominent Authors Write About the Relationships That Shape Our Lives, published by Jeremy P. Tarcher in 1998. “Flying Home” first appeared in Western Edge in 1977, and was later collected in Tattoo, published by Circinatum in 1978. Both stories are © the Estate of Jack Cady.
