Dancing in the Movies

Six dexterously shaped stories make up this volume, winner of the 1985 Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction. Boswell's believable characters are involved in situations that are sometimes painfully true-to-life. One story concerns an American soldier who loses both feet while fighting in the Korean War; another tells of a black New York City policeman who visits his in-laws in Tennessee, where he is tormented by his fear that he is a racist and by the discovery that he loves his wife's sister. The author's ability to create affecting relationships is evident in such entries as ""Kentucky,'' which deals with the growing pains of three brothers, and the title story, in which a young man returns home from college and tries to save his girlfriend from her destructive lifestyle. A satisfying, if at times disturbing, collection. January