StringTown Press Books

The Moss Gatherers

Stories by Matt Briggs

Price: $14.00

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Table of Contents

The Moss Gatherers
Inheritance
Red Breast
Reverse Order
Mother's Milk
Mirror Dress
Earwig
Contagion
Randy
Dry Farming
Supersport
Snoqualmie

Copyright © 2005

THE MOSS GATHERERS by Matt Briggs, short story collection, 2005, perfect bound, paper, 200 pages, 5X8, $14.00, ISBN: 0971896739

A sense of the bizarre unique to the Northwest runs through the stories in The Moss Gatherers: a French cyclist is murdered by supposed "moss gatherers" in costal Oregon; a child has fungus growing on his forehead; and an old woman wearing a crown of lit candles plays a Victrola in a cornfield. The stories are infused with a sense of decay and stagnancy lit by surprising flickers of human decency, however small: a young girl plays boogie woogie at her brother's wedding, and her family dances; an old woman tries to comfort a grieving teenager; and a woman preoccupied with safety leaves her front door wide open one night for the sake of a lost bird. Through these stories, we realize that the bizarre is always at the periphery of our otherwise mundane lives, and when we meet it, we are offered the chance to be forever changed.

For more information, visit Matt Briggs’ website, SEEDCAKE, at http://www.seedcake.com/mt/index.html.