{"id":11344,"date":"2025-03-03T07:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T12:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11344"},"modified":"2025-03-05T08:03:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T13:03:06","slug":"with-our-bellies-full-and-the-fire-dying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11344","title":{"rendered":"With Our Bellies Full and the Fire Dying"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I must have gained ten pounds reading this collection of short stories by Debra H. Goldstein. Though she was raised in New Jersey and Michigan (and is an alumna of my alma mater, the University of Michigan\u2014Go Blue!), she spent much of her career in the South, which has definitely seeped into her story-telling. It\u2019s a south of pie auctions, bar-b-cue, fatal seafood casseroles, and corn pudding recipes over which deadly fights can erupt. She corrals these culinary delights under the broad heading: \u201cTales of Sinning and Redemption,\u201d and a particularly luscious cake is the recipe for redemption in one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s most fun about reading this collection is how varied the stories are, even with the frequent appearance of something delicious. They\u2019ve appeared in many collections, some not widely distributed, so it\u2019s a new and invigorating experience to read them. One that\u2019s particularly apt for Mardi Gras tomorrow is \u201cWho Dat? Dat the Indian Chief?\u201d about the Mardi Gras Indians and their elaborate and in this case, unexpectedly valuable, costumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A number of the stories feature children, precocious ones for the most part, like the son of the sheriff who not only discovers a body, but analyzes the crime scene based on his Magic of Forensic Science<\/em> book. One I especially liked was \u201cThe Girls in Cabin Three,\u201d made up solely of letters home from a teenage camper, whose reports must have horrified her parents!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the stories are short, Goldstein loads in some compelling surprises, as in her story about a homeless encampment, \u201cSo Beautiful or So What,\u201d where characters aren\u2019t necessarily what they seem. Do they all get redemption? The lucky ones do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, Goldstein\u2019s writing is clear and entertaining, capturing her characters and their outlook on life\u2014good, bad, self-centered, or magnanimous\u2014most convincingly. Very possibly, her years as a judge trained her to see through people\u2019s outer presentation to their core, which skill she now uses to great effect in these entertaining stories. Or perhaps that skill made her a good jurist\u2014whichever, her readers are now the beneficiaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Order the collection here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I must have gained ten pounds reading this collection of short stories by Debra H. Goldstein. Though she was raised in New Jersey and Michigan (and is an alumna of my alma mater, the University of Michigan\u2014Go Blue!), she spent … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1288,126,120],"tags":[2263],"class_list":["post-11344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-reading-2","category-short-story","tag-southern-us"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2WY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11346,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11344\/revisions\/11346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}