Sway
Review of Sheldon Lee Compton’s latest collection of short fiction
Hard living. Addiction. Violence. Generational failure. Guilt. Witchcraft. These themes run throughout the 30 pieces of fiction collected in Sheldon Lee Compton’s latest collection, Sway. Let me tell you, friends: I’m here for it.
I came across Compton, a prolific grit lit writer from Eastern Kentucky, about a year ago and quickly became a fan of his writing, which has appeared in BULL, Always Crashing, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, among many others. Far be it from simply a case of coming across another Sheldon in the wilderness, I admire both Compton’s perspective and writing style.
The pieces collected in Sway range from micro and flash fiction to longer stories, all located in and around the fictional Red Knife, Kentucky area. Compton’s prose is lean and hard, and while many of the pieces here are dark as a moonless Appalachian night, they are imbued with compassion.
In “Pepper,” a young boy believes in baseball when all else in life has let him down. Seven-year-old Todd focuses on pitching with a zeal that mirrors his hero, Tom Seaver. He doesn’t have much else going for him.
At the simplest level, it’s a question of whether or not he can work through pain, adversity, turbulence, in less than ideal circumstances.
The result is one of the finest baseball stories I’ve come across, up there with W.P. Kinsella’s best even, though far more grim than anything in The Thrill of the Grass.
In “How to Get to Destin,” a low-level drug dealer and an alcoholic ex-lawyer come to an understanding regarding justice. In “Donna <3 Morris 4 Ever,” obsession lasts a lifetime and then some. A pair of preteen cousins form a peculiar bond in “The Visitors” by projecting their fears onto a late night TV show about aliens, only for it to fall apart just as quick.
“A Shadow the Length of a Lifetime,” “This Tyrant, This Child of Pride,” “Victory Party” and “Exhumation” all deal with the failure of fathers in unique, heartbreaking fashion.
All a man could do was everything he could, and the fact that he hadn’t done this enough in his life was its own trip to Indiana. It was grief on top of grief on top of grief. But time won’t stop so a person can catch their breath. Time falls across the world the same way it always has, with a hatred for living creatures unable to lean into that forward motion.
Sister Hall, a backwoods witch, makes central appearances in a number of key stories throughout the collection, as do a number of other characters, whether as protagonists themselves or bit players in the larger dramas unfolding. “Those Made of Shadow that Eat Shadow and Grow” tie a number of these pieces together, forming a dark high point to the loose narrative that binds the tales in Sway together, in much the same way as a dark secret can bind seemingly disparate players together in any small town the dark old world around.
He wanted to know about the business of being an outlaw. He was a scared and skinny thing, desperate. They all were near the end. I was, too. Still am, here in the dark.
Compton’s writing is certainly situated in place. He plays the regional card from a position of strength, in the tradition of Faulkner and, more directly, DJ Breece Pancake. In these stories, the details of gritty Eastern Kentucky life illuminate truths which are universal. This, no doubt, is what appeals to me most in Compton’s writing (and Pancake’s as well). Whether the reader has ever visited Appalachia or not, they' are down in the hills, hollers, and honky tonks along with the characters Compton is writing about with every turn of the page — for good or ill.