THE STORIES OF FREDERICK BUSCH is a veritable treasure trove of the art of the short story. No surprise, of course, since Busch has been much admired by other writers for decades now, not to mention readers like me who appreciate serious fiction done right. A Busch fan for over twenty years, I have read almost all of his novels by now, but had read only two of his story collections, so of the thirty stories gathered here only seven (from TOO LATE AMERICAN BOYHOOD BLUES and RESCUE MISSIONS) were familiar to me. I had planned to quickly skim those, but they were just so damn good that I ended up reading them all over again.

Short stories are always a hard sell in the book world, which is a shame, because they are such a demanding art form, and one which Fred Busch had long ago mastered. But Busch himself would have been the first to tell you that it took WORK, years of it, to finally get it right. I am reminded here of an autobiographical essay he wrote called "The Floating Christmas Tree" (in A DANGEROUS PROFESSION) about his early struggling days, newly married and living in a tiny New York apartment, where he would write late at night in the bathroom (so he wouldn't awaken his wife), perched hunched over on the edge of the tub, his typewriter on the toilet lid -

"I was twenty-two - and I was going to be a writer, I WAS a writer, I was going to get THEM to admit that I was a writer, and I sat in that awkward position and wrote my awkward prose."

I remember how I laughed when reading that, but by God Fred Busch kept at it. Witness these stories, every one of them perfect gems of the genre. And that same self-effacing sense of humor is displayed often, as well as the much darker themes which often fill Busch's fiction. In fact, Busch himself often shows up here, or thinly-disguised versions of him. From the clueless pudgy professor in "Widow Waters" to the desperate out-of-shape dog lover in "The Page," the well-meaning but buffoon-ish dispatcher in "The Baby in the Box," or the practical blustery father in "The Domicile," all the way to another concerned father of a returned veteran suffering from PTSD in "Patrols." Because Busch followed that oft-quoted precept of writers. He wrote about what he knew. And he knew about being a son, a brother, a husband, a father. And he was also a keen observer of human nature, and mined every aspect of what he knew and saw, often featuring small boys, abandoned husbands or disillusioned wives as his main characters.

Elizabeth Strout (another writer I very much admire) provides a most useful introduction here to Busch as a writer, a teacher and a man. But the stories themselves are the real stars. I called this book a treasure trove, and I will treasure it. My very highest recommendation. ( )