Spell heaven : and other stories
(Book)

"Incisive linked stories about a lesbian couple moving from San Francisco to the Cannery Row, the heart of Steinbeck country, wonderful profiles of their new neighbors and the challenges of being strangers in a new place. A narrator, raised in a working-class Croatian American fishing family and immigrant community, enjoys an early career in labor-oriented jobs. Years later, she unexpectedly finds herself in an academic position in a white-collar world, "where the clothes are clean and the politics are dirty." With her wife, she moves to a down-in-the-heels seacoast town where she finds a community of outsiders; the marginal at the margins of the sea. The coastal un-elites. Instead of moving on up people move over on the bench and welcome her in. Stories include the tale of an undocumented boy's downing when a wave pulls him out to sea, an ex-FBI agent's surveillance of a man who leaves chocolate bars at a tree in a weekly ritual, a queer couple's move to a gay unfriendly neighborhood and their response to a local murder, a mother on meth who teaches a lesson on mercy and the story of Kite Man who flies kites from a fishing pole and sells drugs on the side. His motto: When they fly you can buy. A modern story of a community of outsiders--not unlike characters found in Steinbeck's Cannery Row--and the queer female narrator drawn to the sea and their world"--,Provided by publisher.