cover image Don't Erase Me CL

Don't Erase Me CL

Carolyn Ferrell. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $20 (163pp) ISBN 978-0-395-71327-3

Like Harriet Tubman feeling the moss on the north side of trees to guide her in her flight out of slavery, the predominantly poor, black characters in the eight stories in Ferrell's debut collection move according to a sort of blind reckoning. Searching for signs, acting on instinct, they look desperately for someone or something to fill in their blanks, proceeding with caution through a dangerous, pitiless world. ""Am I going to get a chance to kill myself, or will I just be buried alive?"" a teenage father-to-be wonders bitterly in ""Can You Say My Name?"" ""It's never-ending, never-stopping,"" says a weary 14-year-old boy charged with caring for all the younger children in his household in ""Proper Library"": ""Because your life is spent on feeding them and you never stop thinking about where the food is going to come from."" In the powerful title story, a young mother with AIDS retraces her life to the days before she knew she was HIV-positive. ""I'm just a mortal woman,"" she says, ""nothing but dust on a meaty frame."" While hope is in short supply for many of Ferrell's characters, her poignant and often poetic language shines brightly, illuminating a harsh world. (June) FYI: ""Proper Library"" was included in The Best American Short Stories 1994.