An Orchard in the Street

This collection of brief fictions by award-winning author Reginald Gibbons explores human experience and memory in ordinary settings—city apartments, rural roads, soap operas, and juvenile court—as a way to understand the depths of thought and feeling in our everyday encounters. These narrative meditations explode with imagery, looking and listening deeply into our everyday experience—the extraordinary within the ordinary, the impossible within the possible.

Praise for the collection

“What I most admire about this book by Reginald Gibbons is how it demonstrates what is, for me, most truly innovative about the short prose form—that is, not merely the strategies of the form itself, but where these unpredictable pieces can take you. Through their lens, Gibbons has arrived at what seems an effortless emotional directness and a voice that is extraordinary for its intense intimacy.” —Stuart Dybek

“Whether they deftly portray intimate moments of family life or the acute notations of a walker in the raw city, these brief pieces begin with the allure of a story.  But what lingers with even greater force is the contemplative mind at work here, a mind which turns itself, by virtue of its pure attention, into a wise and generous heart. I read these pieces slowly, not because they are ‘difficult’ (they’re too immediate for that), but just glad to let each one radiate.” —Patricia Hampl

© BOA Editions, Ltd. 2017