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Synopsis
"Jim Harrison's new book, The Summer He Didn't Die, is a collection of novellas showcasing the flair that has made him a contemporary master of the form, and a celebration of love, the senses, and family, no matter how untraditional." The Summer He Didn't Die exults with life and all its magic. In the title novella, Brown Dog, a hapless Michigan Indian loved by Harrison's readers, is trying to parent his two step-children and take care of his family's health on meager resources - it helps a bit that his charms are irresistible to the new dentist in town. Republican Wives is a witty satire on the sexual neuroses of the Right, the mystery of why any person desires another, and the irrational power of love that, when thwarted, can turn so easily into an urge to murder. Tracking is a meditation on Harrison's fascination with place, telling his own familiar mythology through the places he has seen and the intellectual loves he has known in a vivid stream of consciousness that transfigures how we look at our own surroundings.
The New York Times - Jean Thompson
One of the pleasures of reading Jim Harrison's fifth collection of novellas is the reminder that this intermediate, unloved and ostensibly unpublishable form is capable of great range and vitality. Novellas must pack all the apparatus of a novel (characters moving through time, sustained action) into a briefer space. In Harrison's case this is an economical 100 pages or so. And ideally, novellas must have something of the short story's precision and the lift that comes from crisp timing and execution. The Summer He Didn't Die meets all these technical requirements, but mostly it succeeds because it is fueled by solid storytelling and by Harrison's characteristic ease as a stylist.