“Scabble Lessons” by Leslie Vryenhoek

Leslie Vryenhoek’s first collection of stories, Scabble Lessons, is a work that can make you feel pain accutely and still make that pain beautiful without diminishing it with sentimentality. Vryenhoek’s stories have been called diamonds in blood, sharp implements…at once domestic and dangerous, and a fist holding a sapphire. These stories cut into character and reader alike, wounding, yes, but also holding fast to those things, those moments, that are beyond worth.

Whether seeing a young poet’s flawed partner through her sensual obsession with a perfect vine tomato in “Early Girl, Pacific Avenue” or feeling fear like the thunderous pounding of bison hooves in the heart of a young single mother in “View Plane,” these stories get at the valuable things in life, the things we cling to desperately with bloodied fists.

This book will make a lover out of you. You won’t want to let it go and it will cling to you when you get up to re-enter the world. Some authors show you well-rounded lives in their stories; Leslie Vryenhoek takes you inside the skin.

Visit Leslie Vryenhoek’s website at http://www.leslievryenhoek.com/.

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