The Queen of Bad Influences

Eleven short masterworks from this great American writer of catastrophe fiction, in which lives are upended as much by broken hearts as by collapsing dams, vainglorious wars, gargantuan wildfires, and shipwrecks

"Built on twin foundations of nostalgia for the never-was, and of that millennial American optimism that is indistinguishable from despair." —Michael Chabon on Jim Shepard's short stories

"A deft, audacious artist." —Norman Rush, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Whites

Across centuries and wildly diverse locations, Shepard holds us in his grip. We witness the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane in Florida from multiple points of view, read the 1864 letters between Lucy in Boone, NC (“Three privates are currently sleeping soundly on our porch in their muddy blankets”) and her great love William, on the march in Tennessee (“I can’t write much for it seems we are looking for a fight every minute”), and in the title story, meet the stubborn Constance, who had “no gift for flirtation” with men, preferring Minna, her best friend and “queen of bad influences” as their devotion unfolds in part on the doomed liner Lusitania.

With irony, compassion, and withering humor, these stories evoke the terrible ease with which catastrophe, human-engineered or otherwise, can sweep away all we find most precious and expose those limitations we’ve refused to address. At the same time, Shepard raises up what is best in us: the love and friendships that sustain, and the consolations and sacrifices we provide one another on a beleaguered planet.JIM SHEPARD has written eight novels, including The Book of Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal, the PEN/New England Award, The Ribalow Prize, and the Clark Fiction Prize, as well as six story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, a finalist for the National Book Award and Story Prize winner. Eight of his stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and three for Pushcart Prizes. He’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and lives in Williamstown with his wife, the fiction writer Karen Shepard, and two beagles.