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• EXTRAORDINARY PORTRAITS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE

  This collection of short stories by Steve Wiegenstein describes quirky small town and rural Ozarkers, both realistically and compassionately. If they are all crazily dysfunctional he doesn’t come down too hard on them for their lack of comprehension of the world around them. Chronicles of the clueless make for interesting reading. These are enormously enjoyable tales. Often the marginalized are described with unrealistic, gummy sympathies that are in fact thinly disguised condescension. 'Slice of life' literature often has an ideological point—the characters being pawns of a political point of view. His characters may be in difficult circumstances, but they don’t come off as victims. That makes them more alive than much fiction about ordinary folks. These are very real screwballs, wonderfully set in out of the way places—like the scattered lights you see from an airplane traveling between coasts. Some short “Discussion Questions” are in the back of the book: “Although the stories are set in the Ozarks, do you see them as having wider significance about people and life in general?” William Faulkner’s Mississippi is also populated by intriguing eccentrics, but Wiegenstein’s style isn’t Faulkneresque. His sentences are way too short for one thing. That there are some similarities indicates Wiegenstein’s stories have “wider significance.” Leland thought the tales oddly Felliniesque—indicating a very much “wider significance." Not like the surrealism of the Italian filmmaker’s wild indifference to chronological time and juxtapositions of supreme strangeness, but rather like his poetic naturalism. Fellini has a similar love of ordinary folk and forgiveness of their profound misconceptions and occasional violence. "Scattered Lights" stories are quite cinematic as well. Leland said, “As I read on, I began hearing Nino Rota for the score, not fiddles or banjoes. Pulling up some Rota scores on YouTube, I of the stories as Rota’s wistful music played and it was indeed a wondrous fit.”

• Stories that make you think you can go home again

  You read the 12 stories of “Scattered Lights,” the new collection of short stories by Steve Wiegenstein, and you almost feel that you’ve come home. “Home” for Wiegenstein is the eastern Missouri Ozarks. No matter where you’re from, the characters are familiar, the culture of the Missouri region seems familiar, and the stories are “true” in the sense that your heart and your head tell you, “Yes, I know people just like that. Some of them were in my family.” One story, “Why Miss Elizabeth Never Joined the Shakespeare Club,” offered a laugh-out-loud moment, Miss Elizabeth lives in the small town of Piedmont, and she gives piano lessons. She has never been invited to join the Shakespeare Club, something like a local junior league with all the trappings of status but none of the service projects. The ladies do occasionally discuss Shakespeare, but its only his name that matters to this group. Miss Elizabeth’s house overlooks an old, abandoned homestead, and what she sees from the window one day – what could only happen in a small town – is what will prevent her from every being invited to join the club. “Miss Elizabeth” may be the funniest story in the collection, but all the stories exhibit a wry understanding small-town life. “The End of the World” is told from the perspective of Larry, who works in the produce section of the local Dixie Food Mart. Larry has joined his fellow church members in something like a tent city near the river, expecting the rapture as predicted by their minister. But the appointed hour arrives and passes. In “Weeds and Wildness,” Mark is the son of the minister at the First Baptist Church. He’s somewhat at loose ends after high school graduation, so he goes to work at the Farm & Home Supply Store and helping his grandfather out down at the old place, helping care for a youth retreat nearby. One night he will get himself entangled with a recluse, old Charley Blankenship, who’s been released from prison and needs Mark’s help. “Trio Sonata in C” is a story of living with an elderly relative with increasing dementia – and a fondness for checking home security while carrying his gun. In “From Thee to My Sole Self,” a woman increasingly believes that her daughter is not the child of her husband, but the man who was office manager. “The Fair” is about country fairs, raging teenage hormones, and a man with an itchy trigger finger who really doesn’t trust carnival workers. “In Bill Burkens and Peter Krull,” you can see all kinds of things from your back window at night. And there’s more, exhibiting the author’s practiced eye at not only observing people but knowing and understanding them. The work that keeps coming to mind is “affectionate,” because it is people like these characters who shape our lives. Wiegenstein is a graduate of the University of Missouri and for several years worked as a newspaper reporter. He returned to school so he could teach at the university level, and he’s taught at Centenary College in Shreveport, Drury University. Culver-Stockton College, and Western Kentucky University. He is also the author of Slant of Light, This Old World, and The Language of Trees, which received the Missouri Writers Guild’s Walter Williams Major Work Award in 2018. Read this man’s stories in “Scattered Lights.” You’ll find people you recognize, perhaps a relative or two, and if you look hard enough, a bit of yourself as well.

• A lot of entertaining stories

  I enjoyed these stories, and as with any compilation of short stories, the range of pleasure was up and down. But there were a lot more ups than downs. Besides being a good insightful detailed writer, he comes up with people and situations that are intriguing and believable. It didn't have as much of an Ozark flavor to it that I had hoped for, but most of the actual stories were quite entertaining.

• Just Life

  This collection of wonderful stories is set in the small towns and rural communities of the Eastern Ozarks, but the stories are really about everywhere, and their subject is the human condition. I suspect that reading them again over time, a person will find new insights waiting. Highly recommended.

• Stories compelling and insightful

  These short stories delve into the personalities and foibles of residents of small towns in the Missouri Ozarks. Each one teaches us something about human nature, the human condition, and both the bleakness and uplift of daily life.

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