“SOME CRITICS SAY you should never start or even use a dream in a story,” writes Cynthia J. Sylvester (Diné) in The Half-White Album (UNM Press), “but I’m awake now and pretending that it wasn’t a dream at all.” That kind of adventurous logic rules Sylvester’s debut, a collection of flash fictions woven so intricately you can barely discern the fine threads connecting 10 concerts, mother-daughter complexities, and several narrators in the Dinétah and beyond. Some read like new legends: Lightning, an Elvis lookalike, meets Thunder in a cherry ’57 Chevy somewhere outside Tucumcari. Once they crank up the tunes? Monsoons.
What We're Reading: The Half White Album
Author Cynthia J. Sylvester's collection of short stories takes readers on a journey led by a band from the Dinétah.
"The Half White Album" by Cynthia J. Sylvester is the second release of the Lynn and Lynda Miller Southwest Fiction Series that focus on the Southwestern experience. Photograph by Inga Hendrickson.