Life in the Air Ocean: Stories - Tapa dura

Nine stories describe the lives of two generations of the Mowry family of Tennessee

g debut by a talented young writer brings together nine stories, some of them deeply shadowed, moving backward and forward in time to give us two generations of a family: the Mowrys of Carville, Tennessee. Daniel Mowry, a refrigeration engineer, is an expert on cold. His wife, Iris, is a casualty of the fifties: she's smart, but a woman sidetracked into marriage and motherhood. Daniel and Iris love their daughters, Ruth and Monica, in the best way they can. Ruth grows up to fixate on sex and one-night stands with Vietnam War veterans. Monica becomes pregnant by the man she lives with. In "Cave Fish," Daniel Mowry, Korean War veteran, expert in the design of domestic appliances (he tells himself he is making the world safe for women and children), is digging himself a real cellar, a crawl space below the kitchen floor. It's his way out, a place where he can tunnel down when his baby begins to scream.
In "Boy Wonder," it is 1937. Daniel is eleven and has a habit he can't beat.