Girl on a Float

Girl on a Float is a collection of stories with a shared setting and recurring conflicts, most of which involve civilization and nature in some kind of revealing interaction. Brian Bedard reveals the northern plains experience as it takes shape in a variety of dramatic situations. That experience invariably involves the challenges of living in a wild space, which tests people’s physical strength and their practical wits within a raw and unpredictable climate. In this environment, you simply cannot ignore the natural world as a reminder and a teacher. The wind, for example, won’t let you.

Brian Bedard is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where he directed the creative writing program and also served as Editor of The South Dakota Review from 1995 to 2011. His short stories have appeared widely in such forums as Quarterly West, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cimarron Review, and North Dakota Quarterly. His first collection of stories, Hour of the Beast and Other Stories, was published by Chariton Review Press. His second collection of stories, Grieving on the Run, won the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award from Snake Nation Press, and was published by Snake Nation Press in 2007 and nominated by that press for the National Book Award in 2008. The South Dakota council of Teachers of English honored Brian as the 2008 South Dakota Author of the Year. At present he lives with his wife, Sharon, in Spokane, Washington, where he is a member of the English  Department at Gonzaga University.

"In the bellowing rush of wind, in the scorching leer of the sun,' Brian Bedard writes, a motorcycle rider 'entered the plains.' Actually, that's a description of the reader. In the rush and scorch of these stories, we truly do enter the prairie."—Justin L. Blessinger, Winner of the Doug Fir Prize for Fiction

"Bedard's collection is a love letter to South Dakota heart, a spirit as vast as the place it inhabits. With imagistic precision, he mines his stories from the valleys, sacred hills, and plains, each a portrait of humility and tenacity, of negotiating the brutal beauty of the land."—Courtney Huse Wika, author of Perch

"Relentlessly evocative with a razor-sharp sense of place, Girl on a Float is a spiritual geography of the post-rural Great Plains."—Dave Grettler, Professor of History and Geography at Northern State University

ISBN: 978-1-946163-14-1

Page Count: 192

Paperback

Publication Year: 2020