These Precious Hours

Michael Corrigan has created a moving story collection about loss, grief, and recovery. Some of the stories are subtly connected. Narrator Alex Hyde-White changes locale, accent, and personality in an instant as he moves from an Idaho Shoshone reservation invaded by Mexican gangs to a Gettysburg battlefield where a relative who is a Civil War hero rests. The strongest two stories are "The Wife and the Monk," in which Leah Brown comes to realize that she might have a better life with a quiet and gentle monk than with her passionate and big-mouthed husband. The other, "If I Had a Hammer," depicts a professor who is driven to extreme behavior in the face of the changes and challenges currently taking place in academia. S.G.B. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine