Brian E. Backstrand

As a former hospice and hospital chaplain and pastor of rural congregations, Brian Backstrand has witnessed firsthand the slow unraveling of the social and economic fabric of small town and rural America. These stories are a memorial to that vanishing lifestyle and the people who have lived it with dignity and courage.

		Little Bluestem: Stories from Rural America ISBN 0-9766274-4-2 Price: $12.95 Jim McGarrah, editor of The Southern Indiana Review, said of this collection of short fiction: " . . . a welcome relief on the canvas of comtemporary fiction. His narratives do what literature is supposed to do. They discover and examine the complexities inherent in the so-called "simple" life. The lyrical prose makes music that a reader will take away from the page and the characters that drive the plots are fueled by real emotional substance. We could ask no more from a first book, or a second, or a third . . ."