In Amber Caron's debut collection of short stories, "Call Up the Waters," the natural world is an escape hatch, a refuge, a site of work and an occasional antagonist.
As the title suggests, a lot of the stories involve water — a lack of water or too much water or characters who have lost homes because of water.
The author said she hopes the book will reach people who are interested in the environment and in the environment changing. Though the author lives in Utah, she believes the stories have a connection to people where the environment is changing, especially in regard to their relationship with water.
"A lot of the story has to do with rural spaces, especially women in rural spaces," Caron said. "A lot of those jobs in the stories were happening in the environment and the natural world. I kept following the things I was most interested in each story — questions of labor."
In “The Handler,” a woman leaves her boyfriend for the New Hampshire woods and 57 sled dogs. In “Call Up the Waters,” a devastating drought leads a mother of two deep into the Colorado Rockies in search of water. A distress call from a boat in Massachusetts Bay compels a mother to plumb her daughter’s secrets in “Sea Women.” And in “Bending the Map,” a woman turns the tables on her obsessive, would-be lover after a powerful storm ravages her canyon home.
The characters in these nine stories — search-and-rescue workers, dog trainers, naturalists, archaeologists and dowsers — are as intent on mapping the self as they are mapping the world around them. But in the words of survival experts, they “bend the map,” misreading the world when it does not match their expectations.
They get lost. They meander. In their searching, familiar landscapes suddenly feel strange; unfamiliar spaces offer something like hope. Off the map and off the grid, these characters, and their regrets and devotions, are nevertheless immediately, intimately recognizable.
Caron said she started writing the collection in 2014.
"I realized I had a collection late in the game," she said. "Some of these stories I've been with for almost 10 years. They feel like I was a newer and younger writer, revised with a more critical eye eight years later."
Kirkus Reviews says: “The achievement of these stories has more to do with emotional movement than a point of arrival. This approach creates a sense of depth and realism: These characters exist beyond the moments the text describes; their world is not restricted to a story arc.[ …] A collection that patiently renders emotional depth without recourse to angst or melodrama.”
An excerpt from "The Handler":
When Leslie arrived in Jefferson, New Hampshire, Brent picked her up from the bus station wearing ripped jeans and a flannel shirt that had been cut off at the elbows. It was twenty-five degrees. It was January. It appeared he was sweating. He opened the passenger-side door, put his hand on her back, and helped her into the truck. Leslie guessed he was older than she was but younger than her father. She found it difficult to name a man’s age. “Moved here in ninety-five,” he said. “Never got around to leaving.” He sped up around the hairpin turns, pointing out every bend in the river, every mountain peak, every place there had ever been a car accident serious enough to kill. Each crash site was marked with a yellow ribbon and a bundle of fake sunflowers. He steered with his knees so he could light his cigarette, and Leslie forced herself not to grab the door handle.
He kept talking. Constellations. Moon cycles. The flood of ’97. The blizzard of ’99. The fire of ’05. When they finally pulled up to the house, the dogs erupted, and Brent went quiet.