Stygo

Hendrie’s first book, STYGO, is a collection of interlocked stories about a fictional town on the sugar beet plains of southeastern Colorado. Stygo is home to Mama Jewell, who runs the foster home where Baby Annie primps and rants and Hallie lives life as a gremlin; Jack Stiles, who locks wild dogs in an old Chevy behind the Sweetwater Truck Stop; Billy Fiddle, the twin who's left to call everybody's bluff; Willa Moon, who has come home because no place else pays nearly as much attention to her; and a cast of children, powerful and wise, who know what to take from life and when to leave it alone. First published by MacMurray and Beck, it won the 1995 American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award. In addition, this collection won The Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award and was one of three finalists for the PEN/Hemingway Award. (Laura Hendrie).