FICTION

WESTERN ELECTRIC by Don Zancanella (Iowa: $19.95, 130 pp.). Decoy missile silos, Laotian refugees in rural Wyoming, chimpanzees on the frontier trail. They are the unusual subject matter found in Don Zancanella’s short-story collection, “Western Electric.” Winner of the 1996 John Simmons Short Fiction Award, Zancanella ranges from pretty good to excellent. The best of these stories are indeed electric.

In “Nativity,” three high school students (two white, one American Indian), must sort out their confused alliances against the pressurized backdrop of family and church. “Disarmament” chronicles the slow-blooming relationship of a vacationing schoolteacher and an Army captain living on the vast prairies of Wyoming. In one of the strongest (certainly the most tragic) stories, a woman’s kindness has disastrous results when she tries to give her ranch to a group of displaced immigrants.

The most frustrating quality of “Western Electric” is its length. Sadly enough, few people have the disposable income to spend $20 on a 130 pages of short stories, even if some of them are quite wonderful.