Corpus Christi: Stories - Softcover

"Bret Johnston writes with searing honesty and a deep compassion about the people in his native Texas. This astonishing book will break your heart, make you nod in comprehension, laugh out loud, and ultimately force you to see your own life in a fresh way. The prose is wonderfully precise and the observations are dead-on. Corpus is a brilliant debut by a young writer who has clearly put literature at the center of his life.
-Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight

"Bret Anthony Johnston's stories read as if they'd been written by someone who's lived various lifetimes, time enough to develop real wisdom, generosity and the art of making strong clean sentences. What I especially love about these stories is the fact that many of the characters walk the finest line between violence and love, and they do so with a tenderness that is heartbreaking."
-Jane Hamilton

"Bret Anthony Johnston is a name to put on your list--that list of writers you always read first. He knows how you can despair of people and go on treasuring them--hard-living, hard-headed, unexpected people who look out of his stories like brightly lit signposts on a dark highway. 'Look here, ' they say. 'Right here.'"
-Dorothy Allison

"In his first collection of stories, Bret Anthony Johnston eloquently depicts individual lives at once haunted and painfully enriched by memory, and by the losses of which memory is made. A wise and moving debut by a talented young writer."
-John Burnham Schwartz, author of Claire Marvel

In a series of stories that follows a theme of the impact of fateful choices and circumstances, a couple reconnects during a hurricane party, a young man cares for his mortally ill mother, a highway accident profoundly affects a group of strangers, and a boy covers up for his father's act of violence. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.