Spell Heaven: And Other Stories

Poet and essayist Mirosevich (Pink Harvest, an essay collection) makes her fiction debut with a stilted story collection. Many entries are narrated by an unnamed university professor who has recently relocated to a Northern California beach town with her wife, Stevie. Though the narrator’s father was a fisherman, she worries in “The Devil Wind” that she’ll be seen as an outsider because of her white-collar status and her queerness. Here and elsewhere, Mirosevich’s prose can be repetitive, indulging in multiple turns of phrase where one might be more effective (“Each wave rhymes with the next, there’s no off note, no tuneless voice”). In “Our Lady at the Derby,” the narrator and Stevie stay at a Motel 6 for a New Year’s Eve getaway, and a man knocks on their door, demanding to be let in. The narrator assumes he’s “hopped up on something,” only to have all of her assumptions reversed by the morning. Throughout, the narrator finds that the people she’s inclined to avoid are not who she thought they were, as in “Murderer’s Bread,” in which Stevie’s dogged friendliness in the aftermath of a violent crime shift the narrator’s understanding of her neighbors for the better. It’s a lesson that would resonate more if the formula weren’t so frequently repeated. This is an easy one to pass on. (Apr.)