Killing the Old Dog: Stories

This collection of eight stories from the author of the novel “The Road to Makokota” features “Killing the Old Dog,” the story of an aging Vietnam veteran and fifth-generation African American farmer living on the family land who lies awake listening to his dying dog. “In the end it was the sound he made that decided me. That long low sound he made trying to breathe,” he begins, then tells us, in his powerfully resonant voice, of carrying the old dog across the farm to the massive, ancient black oak tree, the heart of the farm and the embodiment of his family history.

The stories range from contemporary drama (“Blind People Can Hurt You When They Cry,” “Scarlatti in Aranjuez”) to literary (“Aminata’s Fire,” “The Stalker”) to Gothic (“Labyrinth,” “Tale of Orchard and Utopia”) to speculative (“The Mission”), taking you from the woods of Appalachia to a town in the Sahel, from a Silicon Valley motel room to a fog-shrouded mansion, from resolve and fearlessness to awe and surprise, and more.