Amy Hempel Reads: "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried," "Nashville Gone to Ashes," and more

Amy Hempel's tightly crafted stories often reflect her concern with resilience. As her characters find their individual, often eccentric "reasons to live," the reader is moved by their struggle to recover. The pain is frequently tempered by Hempel's sense of the absurd, as in the story where a veterinarian's widow reads a letter to her late husband's Ask the Animal Doctor newspaper column from a man who thinks his cat is homosexual. The letter begins, "My cat Frank (not his real name)...." This nicely selected range of stories includes "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried" and "Nashville Gone to Ashes" from Reasons to Live and "The Harvest" and "The Rest of God" from At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom.