Book Review: "Fires of Our Choosing" by Eugene Cross

I hadn't heard of Eugene Cross' affecting and well-written short story collection, Fires of Our Choosing, until an author I follow on the Goodreads website recommended it. I'm really glad I pay attention to those recommendations, because otherwise I would have missed out on a collection I'm still thinking about a few days after completing it.

The characters in Cross' stories are all dealing with some type of struggle. Whether it's a young boy so overcome with rage at his brother leaving following the tragic death of their father that he severely beats up another classmate, a widower who finds a renewed sense of excitement by visiting a casino about an hour from the retirement community he lives in, a teenage babysitter just on the verge of college whose routine babysitting job has bigger ramifications than she is aware of, or the middle-aged man locked in a battle of wills with his girlfriend's son, whose temperament is all too similar to the boy's father, who used to beat the narrator up when they were in high school, each story has its main character facing a test of emotional (or sometimes physical) strength. Some of my favorite stories in the collection included "Rosaleen, If You Know What I Mean," "Only the Strong Will Survive," "Come August," "The Brother," and "The Gambler."

If I have any criticism about the collection, it's that I felt that some of the stories ended just before something key was going to happen, but the stories didn't leave you in suspense wondering what that something was, I just felt disappointed. Luckily those instances were outweighed by some powerful, fully fleshed out stories that affected me. Eugene Cross is a tremendously talented writer, and I hope this collection is just the start of a terrific career in fiction. I'll be watching.