The Trail of the Demon and Other Stories

The Trail of the Demon

by Jane Gillette

Available here and here.

ISBN: 978-1-945829-06-2

Retail price: $14.95

Genre: Literary/Short stories

Page count: 156 pages

ABOUT JANE GILLETTE & THE TRAIL OF THE DEMON AND OTHER STORIES

Jane Gillette has a distinguished career as a writer and editor, publishing ten books and over 150 articles on landscape architecture, but so far, her fiction has only been available in literary magazines and prize anthologies. That changes on October 24, with the publication of Gillette’s debut story collection, The Trail of the Demon and Other Stories, by Missouri Review Books, a new imprint from the world-renowned literary quarterly the Missouri Review. As Gillette puts it, “In my mid-seventies I find I now have lots to say.”

Other writers have a lot to say about Gillette’s work: Alix Ohlin calls Gillette’s storytelling voice “reminiscent of Grace Paley or Edith Pearlman… strong and smart and wholly her own.” Tina May Hall calls Gillette’s characters “eccentric truth-tellers, great wits and observers, dinner party companions you’d fight to sit next to even as you were a bit afraid of them.”

Indeed, there is something a little scary about Gillette’s incisive prose. Most of the stories in The Trail of the Demon have a ghost, a demon, or a devil threading its way through the action, which may involve a ceremony like performing in an Easter pageant, an enterprise like starting a wonderful new restaurant, or a good deed like visiting the sick. In this way what initially seems innocent transforms into a vaguely demonic experience. The stories end happily enough, just stained a little, just a little dark and questionable, not quite what you were expecting, like so much of life.

PRESS

Press Kit for Jane Gillette

Bookworm interview

TMR Soundbooth interview

Bloom Q&A

Ten Questions for Jane Gillette (from the Massachusetts Review)