Where I Am Now: Inspiring Stories of Personal Growth and Transformation - Perfect for Self-Reflection, Book Clubs, and Motivational Reading

Robert Day has been a professor, a cowboy, a woodcutter, an observer of human nature, a skillful writer and a Kansan. Those experiences and his longtime association with rural Kansas make him a master in the telling of stories about the Midwest."Where I Am Now: Stories," a collection of short stories, offers readers views of Kansas life using well rounded, sometimes eccentric characters. The collection opens with "My Father Swims His Horse at Last." This story takes place during a son's college years. The father lives on "Half-Vast Ranch" where he rails against government, the internal combustion engine and almost everything else. Verbena, his horse, provides the glue to hold the story and its memories together.In "The One-Man Woodcutter," readers will find an enjoyably odd character. The death of his daughter and the grief over it propel Clayton, the father, to a series of eccentric behaviors that could only happen in the tiny, dying towns of America.In the "Pan-Kansas Swimming Champion," Day weaves a number of parallel stories: an account of a daily swimming routine, baseball memories from the Mantle, Maris, Berra era, and an imaginary competition with an anonymous girl swimming in the next lane. The flow of words and ideas mimic the swimmer's stroke and swift movement through water. Craftily spun, beautifully written! "The Skull Hunter" tells of a man who collects and sells animal skulls. The Skull Hunter is a spinner of Faulknerian tales, some true. Even though the Skull Hunter is an unreliable narrator, his fabrications are both bizarre and fascinating. "It's all in me. Sally Norton. The white horse. It's all me. I've filled up the river with me," the Skull Hunter says. Absolutely wonderful!"Notes on the Cold War in Kansas" takes readers back to the atomic bomb paranoia of the 1950s. In spite of the sense of impending doom, Kansas is a sanctuary and a haven where young boys are still able to do what adolescent boys have always done, contemplate pubic hair and girls."Where I Am Now," the one story in the collection without a Kansas setting, takes place in the Bordeaux region of France. Here, Day reveals vignettes of life near the Dordogne River. Day compares French horizons with the vastness of those in Kansas. The cowboy in Day cannot resist chiding the French for their inability to build a good livestock fence. Discussions of wine and literature -- Montaigne, Chekhov -- prove Americans capable of culture. This Kansan speaks some French and drives a Deux Chevaux.