Among Prisoners

The author of last year's highly praised The Cockfighter offers eight stories in his strong debut collection of short fiction. While they are not all equally successful, several feature lively, complex narrators who confess the uneasy truths of their lives in monologue form. In two forceful tales, the arrestingly unpleasant speakers reveal themselves as prisoners of their own hearts. The unnamed narrator of ""The Indian Way,"" the collection's opener, describes his broken marriage to Native American Lily and his job at the Hopi Cultural Center before telling how he runs over a bullfrog with his truck and brings it to the local restaurant for cooking. There, Native Americans confront him about eating the sacred frog, while he silently berates them for what he perceives to be their tribe's grievous shortcomings: drinking too much, forgetting their roots and losing their ""way."" Manley handles his self-pitying narrator's opinions on race relations and cultural differences with powerful, unapologetic directness. The detached misogyny of a retired army MP who mail-orders Asian brides is conveyed in the unsparing ""Mr. Butterfly."" Sexually dissatisfied with the first bride he acquired, a 12-year-old Filipino, Cutty finds he can't send her back. His name takes on macabre overtones as he describes her fate, and that of the other unsuspecting women he keeps luring via letters. ""Badass"" is a wrenching story of a guard whose wife catches him in a 40-year-old lie about the murder of a black prisoner. ""The Evidence"" zeroes in on tender-hearted George and swindling Lee as they anticipate a press conference where George will announce his abduction by a creature that resembles Bigfoot. While it is compelling, this story has a screenplay feel to it, with quick repartee for dialogue and a bare background. Though some of the anchoring voices ring hollow at moments, overall, Manley's Southern-inflected tales have a rough-around-the-edges appeal as portraits of everyday folk imprisoned by their own ignorance and greed. (Feb.)