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Known mostly for his detective fiction, James Lee Burke has also written outside of his well-known Dave Robicheaux and Billie Bob Holland series. JESUS OUT TO SEA is a collection of 11 short stories published between 1992 and 2006 in various magazines or excerpted from his books. Each features Burke's trademark descriptive writing, but in various physical and time settings. I was surprised at how many stories were set in Houston in the 1940s and 1950s. There were also tales dealing with the war in Iraq and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Burke includes a variety of themes in the stories. He deals with characters whose environment is poor but whose lives are rich. Young boys coming of age; iconoclastic individuals standing up to their principles; dysfunctional families and the grief that they cause – tragedy reigns alongside hope. It's hard to choose which of the 11 tales in this collection was myvfavorite. One of the candidates for that honor was Texas City, 1947 which was excerpted from A STAINED WHITE RADIANCE. Living a hardscrabble life in the 1940s, the Sonnier children are subjected to abuse from the woman who is living with their father, an oil roughneck who really has no use for any of them. It's a brutal existence, and things are bound to go bad when the woman treats them miserably. But if pressed, I'd have to say that the title story, Jesus Out to Sea, which was originally published in Esquire in 2006, was the most powerful story for me. It's a very relevant piece set in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, from the point of view of two old musicians who reminisce about "The Big Sleazy" while watching the city being destroyed by nature. It took my breath away. I'm not a big fan of short story collections, and this book illustrates why. There are some excellent individual pieces, but on the whole I found that many of the offerings were a little snapshot of a time and place that just ended without a really satisfying conclusion. It was interesting to see Burke writing outside of the Robicheaux series. His tone and style in this collection was quite different from his series works, but as might be expected, he still writes beautifully.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, July 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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