Cracked Wheat and Other Stories by Hugh Cook

“These intense and unforgettable characters and Cook’s tense elegant style, make Cracked Wheat one of the finest collections of the past years.”
– Globe & Mail

“The greatest single achievement in Cracked Wheat is Cook’s writing ‘voice’: refined, restrained, reflective and precise.”
– Calvinist Contact

These ten stories present unexpected moments in the lives of a variety of characters:
An immigrant boy befriends a neighbour girl living with her father in a dilapidated shack, and learns the meaning of depravity in a way that his Calvinist upbringing has never prepared him for…
A minister in the small rural church is asked to drive out to the remote home of one of his parishioners, a stubborn pig farmer, to find out why the man wasn’t in church the day before, and ends up delivering an unexpected sermon…
A university student delivering bread door to door for the summer is invited by a lonely woman to come inside for a cold drink, and discovers a reality that is more complex than the world of his books…
A young man runs away from his strict home to join a circus, only to discover that he has been pursued all the while by a familiar yet mysterious figure who catches him when he is least prepared…
A father drives his teenage daughter to her dance lesson in an old church, and learns for the first time the truth of his ancestors’ belief that the body is a holy temple…

Unified by their Dutch-Canadian subject-matter, these stories convince the reader with their clear detail, their honest perception, and their larger vision.

Hugh Cook was born in the Hague and immigrated to Canada with his family when he was seven years old. He holds an M.A. from Simon Fraser University and an M.F.A from the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. He is Professor of English at Redeemer College and lives in Hamilton, Ontario. His collection of short stories, Home in Alfalfa, and his novel The Homecoming Man, both published by Mosaic Press, received wide critical acclaim.