Mary Hood Selected Works

A Clear View of the Southern Sky reveals women in the twenty-first century doing what women have always done in pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. In each of the ten tales from southern storyteller Mary Hood, women have come—by circumstances and choice—to the very edge of their known worlds. Some find courage to winnow and move on; others seek the patience to risk and to stay. Along the way hearts, bonds, speed limits, fingernails, and the Ten Commandments get broken. Dust settles, but these women do not.

In the title story, a satellite dish company promises that happiness—or at least access to its programming—requires just a TV and a clear view of the southern sky. The short story itself reveals the journey of a Hispanic woman whose mission is to assassinate a mass murderer, an agenda triggered by post-traumatic stress wrought by seeing the murderer's cynical grin on a news program. We follow her into the shadow of an enormous satellite dish on a roof across the street from the courthouse and ultimately into a women's prison English-as-Second-Language class where she must confront her life. She has slept but never dreamed, and now she wakes.

In other stories Hood introduces us to a kindergarten teacher, stunned by a student's blurted-out question, as she discovers her deepest vocation and the mystery of its source. We meet a widow who befriends a young neighbor, only to realize they must keep secrets from each other and hold fast to their hope. A woman trucker discovers the depth of her love as she imagines her cell phone calls—and her sweetheart's own messages—winging their way, tower to tower, along her interstate route. Two stories deal with one man and two of his wives and how they learn the lessons only love can teach about the reach and limitations of ownership and forever. The collection concludes with the novella "Seambusters," in which a diverse cast of women workers in a rural Georgia mill sew camouflage for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The women are part of a larger purpose, and they know it. When the shadow of death passes over the factory, each woman and the entire community find out what it really means to have American Pride.

Mary Hood's novella Seam Busters (available as a standalone book or as part of the collection A Clear View of the Southern Sky) explores the connections we make to one another, from the simplest of acts to those moments that define life and death. When Irene Morgan returns to Frazier Fabrics, a family-owned cotton mill in the hardscrabble heart of Ready, Georgia, she joins an eclectic group of women workers sharing their interwoven lives inside and outside the factory. Under constant surveillance and beholden to production quotas and endless protocols presented under the auspices of "American Pride," the women sew state-of-the-art camouflage for U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, one of whom is Irene's son.

As Irene toils under the stress of the learning curve and production goals in her first ninety days, she comes to embrace the camaraderie of her peers, some of whom play on the mill's bowling team, the Seam Busters. She comes to know Coquita, a shaky veteran returned from three tours in the Middle East; Kit, an angel-haired rule breaker unlucky in love; the stoic Hmong woman Sue Nag; the beaten but not yet defeated K'shaundra; and Jacky, a well-intentioned fool determined to be heard. In time Irene comes to value her bonds with this motley crew as much as with her husband, Deke, on their small farm and with her far-flung children and grandchildren. When the shadow of death travels from the war front to the home front, Hood deftly braids the threads of these disparate lives and stories into a lifeline for Irene, as her entire community gathers together in an impassioned act of mourning ultimately giving rise to mercy.

Inspired with the essence of Mary Hood's native South and spiced with intrigue and the dark side of human nature, this collection of stories offers the drama, humor, and heartache of everyday life and unexpected tragedy—with more than a few twists. The stories cover the terrain of transition between old and new, history and the present, holding on and letting go.

In "Finding the Chain," Cliffie struggles to overcome her ties to the past and forge a beginning with her newly formed family. "Moths" shows how one man's fortitude, friends, and love of nature help him see his life of poverty in a new light. In the title novella, Delia struggles to overcome her fears of separation and abandonment in the face of her father's suicide.

With characters, situations, and settings that capture the turmoil of lives—and of a region—caught in transition between the past and present, the stories of And Venus Is Blue portray both the uncompromising harshness of life and the power of human tenacity.

Mary Hood's lyrical, humorous, and down-to-earth novel lays bare marriage with all its intangible dreams and mysteries and reveals the subtle web of personalities and events that characterize a small town. When a brutal accident leaves Faye Parry with permanent amnesia, her new husband, Vic Rios—a sea captain and reformed rake—reverts to his old ways, resulting in an estrangement that seems irreparable.