Odd Ducks cover image

Odd Ducks

$16.95

Stories
Patricia Lawson
176 pages
October 2020
978-1-943491-23-0 (paper)

Category:

Winner of the Byron Caldwell Smith Award for Kansas Authors

This debut collection of nine humorous stories, set in and around Kansas City from the 1950s to the 2000s, often depicts adults awkwardly mentoring talented young people, whether in a community garden, a library, or in one-on-one advice. Other characters feel like outsiders in their own neighborhoods or suddenly become outsiders when straying into unfamiliar places.

Patricia Lawson’s work has appeared in Pleiades, Dalhousie Review, New Letters, and elsewhere. She taught for many years at Kansas City Kansas Community College and was an associate editor of The Same. She is a Riverfront Readings committee member at the Writers Place in Kansas City and a graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Odd Ducks is her solo fiction debut.

“Pat Lawson’s fine new collection, Odd Ducks, reminds us that engaging stories can be found anywhere, including the modest households of both Kansas Cities. Among her subjects are adolescents bemused by the odd rituals of their parents; school librarians beguiled by a charming student; and Latino kindergartners who show more imagination than their teachers. Then there are the well-meaning neighbors who learn the singular lesson—running like a leitmotif through the collection—that no good deed goes unpunished. A Lawson story has three stellar traits: a Chekhovian gift for the telling detail, a talent for ending a story with breathtaking precision, and a dry humor infusing it all.”
—Catherine Browder, Now We Can All Go Home: Three Novellas in Homage to Chekhov

Distributed for BkMk Press.