FICTION

RED WOLF, RED WOLF by W.P. Kinsella (Southern Methodist University Press: $17.50, cloth, $8.95, paper; 182 pp.). While W. P. Kinsella has written 15 books and more than 200 short stories, he is undoubtedly best known for his prize-winning novel, “Shoeless Joe,” which, in turn, became the mystic movie, “Field of Dreams.” In “Red Wolf, Red Wolf,” Kinsella’s collection of 13 short stories, first published in Canada in 1987, we have a well-balanced cross section of the author’s skills in shaping believable people moving against ordinary backgrounds and behaving sometimes self-destructively, sometimes foolishly, but always 100% believably. Kinsella’s protagonists aren’t always likable and certainly can be as foolish as the best of us. In “Evangeline’s Mother,” Henry Vold, an otherwise promising savings-and-loan executive plays the fool’s role to perfection when he scuttles both his marriage and career in becoming involved with the sexually precocious friend of his own teen-age daughter. Critics label Kinsella’s style as being from the “slice of life” school. It makes it sound too easy. Knowing how deeply, and at what angle, to slice is the trick as the author proves convincingly in this admirable collection.