Fishing for Ghosts: Twelve Short Stories

Reconciling the forces of the past with their often intangible impact on the present is the common theme that unites the 12 stories in this uneven collection. Brown, an English professor at the University of Nevada, extrapolates from his own Missouri upbringing to explore the Midwestern origins of his characters, some of whom are transported intact from his first novel, Chester's Last Stand . When he's on, the author captures the feel of the rural landscape, along with the small events that shaped both lives and character on the family farm during the post-war era. When he's off, the prose turns alternately flat and mawkish, and it often seems as if the author is writing about characters whose lives are foreign to him, as in ``Bird Song.'' The best effort here is ``Melting With Ruth,'' a moving, poignant account of an L.A. photographer who returns to Missouri to be with a woman from his childhood who's on the edge of spinsterhood. Other successful pieces include ``Marked by the Lamb,'' about a young boy whose family is steering him into a religious career and ``The Devil You Don't Know'' in which a young, naively ambitious Marxist journalist is ``accidentally'' elected mayor of a small cattle town. Mining a vein that's been tapped by writers from Washington Irving to William Kittredge, this collection should please readers with a bent for rural fiction. (Feb.)