Forty-year veteran of the novel, noted feminist, and author of over ten books, Sallie Bingham returns with Red Car, a collection written in her signature style--discreet, sly prose circling taboo subjects. Her new offering is about love enjoyed, whether alone or with lovers, sensual or familial, comedic or tragic, often with a wry twist.

In these twelve stories, Bingham travels from the beaches of Normandy shortly after the second World War, to modern-day Brittany, Santa Fe, Florida, and Southern Colorado to situate her wide range of characters. Her protagonists blunder through relationships, no matter where they happen to live. But somehow we know they'll survive and be wiser for it. Bingham's new collection, with its honed aesthetic of subtlety and honesty is an adventurous read.

Red Car: Stories by Sallie Bingham
Published by Sarabande Books
$21.95 (192p) ISBN 978-1-932511-59-8
$15.95 (Paper) ISBN 978-1-932511-60-4

Red Car: Stories

Hardened but not compromised by adult life, these 12 luminous stories from former National Book Critics Circle director Bingham (Transgressions) feature narrators who find mature, often solitary forms of reckoning, and even happiness. The four-time married mother of a successful novelist in "A Gift for Burning" justifies to an interviewer everything from her selections for stand-in fathers to enabling her son's substance abuse -- all, she admits, because she was too distracted at the time to pay much attention to him. "That Winter" imagines a lone woman writer "of no particular age" braving it out in isolated southern Colorado until an emergency brings the welcome warmth, and gradual love, of an undemanding stranger. Several of the stories are set in France, such as "Sagesse," which involves an American family vacationing in Normandy at the close of the WWII. Yet the most exotic locale remains the quiet neighborhood in sunny Florida of the title story, where the eponymous red '65 Pontiac convertible rests at the curb after innumerable changes in ownership over the years, telling the story of the end of a marriage. There is not a false note in Bingham's striking collection. (Reprinted from Publisher's Weekly, January 2008)

Red Car: Stories by Sallie Bingham
Published by Sarabande Books
$21.95 (192p) ISBN 978-1-932511-59-8
$15.95 (Paper) ISBN 978-1-932511-60-4

My next collection of short stories, Red Car, will be published by Sarabande Press is April, 2008. Schedule of readings and signings to follow, as well as an excerpt from the collection.

From Booklist: "Bingham has been writing fiction for decades, and her newest short stories evince the tangy fruits of her labors i their graceful balance, refined composition, telling details, and the probity of their emotions. Polished and sexy."

Book Description:
Melanie is a dancer--the most unlikely dancer in the world, a woman who has had a hard life, waitressing, raising a son alone, putting up with an abusive husband. Late in life, she decides to pursue one dream, a dream she can't afford, which her husband opposes: she will become a skilled ballroom dancer, moving to the old love songs that have never applied to her life. And she wants to learn to lead! As she takes lessons, scrapes up the money to pay for costumes, and prepares for her first competition, she faces increasing opposition. But she persists, entering the glamorous, demanding world of professional dancing with an innocence and a determination that will change her life.

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Synopsis:
Cory is a middle-aged Easterner, long-divorced, energetic and fearlessly sensual. Pursuing a dream she has nursed for years, she moves to Taos, New Mexico and buys a famous old house and, in the tradition of its previous owner, turns it into a crucible for the transformation of her guests. Eccentric and charming, with a lover from the Pueblo and lots of turquoise and broomstick skirts, Cory finds her guests, mainly skiers and tourists, bewildered by her particular philosophy, which she calls "The School of As-If."

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