Welding with Children

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

In eleven raucous, touching stories, Tim Gautreaux traces the course of sin and redemption through the lives of small-town women and men in Louisiana. His unforgettable characters include a grandfather who discovers, while ctaking care of his grandchildren, that they are growing up without any sense at all of right and wrong; a camera repairman who discovers a woman's secret in her undeveloped film; and a one-armed hitchhiker who changes the life of the man who picks her up. Each one a small miracle of storytelling and compassion, Tim Gautreaux's stories are "a pleasure from start to finish. You want to hand [this book] to your friends and say 'read this' " (The Plain Dealer).

NY Times Book Review - Liam Callanan

The author proves himself an able cartographer as well as a nimble writer, mapping with affectionate but unflinching accuracy both the back roads of Louisiana...and the distance between parents and children.

Tim Gautreaux has written three novels and two collections of short stories, one of which, Welding With Children, was selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, GQ, and Zoetrope, and also in volumes of The O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and New Stories from the South. He is a professor emeritus/writer in residence in the English Department at Southeastern Louisiana University.