Story That Ends with a Scream

The author of Midnight Cowboy delivers a short story collection about the yearnings of those who live on the margins: “Herlihy writes with an edge of iron” (Nelson Algren). In his second collection of short stories, James Leo Herlihy explores a landscape at the fringes of society. Drawn with his signature humor and deft dialogue, Herlihy’s characters search for the fragments of meaning that have gone missing from their lives. In the titular story, Mary Ellen McClure’s unfulfilled, trailer park life is driven to the breaking point when she suspects her husband of having an affair. But when a Ouija board gives her the message that she will have an affair of her own, Mary Ellen becomes enamored with the fantasy—and resolves to go looking for her mysterious lover. Other stories tell of Consilada Rector, who can’t get people to believe in the leprechaun that presides over her husband’s bar; Mrs. Dorothy Fitzpatrick, who records the existence of a ghostly mail delivery truck; and a dying man who comes to stay with a mother and her blessed son William.