
Review: For You to See the Stars by Radney Foster
Reviewed by Nancy Posey
For You to See the Stars
Stories by Radney Foster
Working Title Farm (an imprint of River’s Edge Media), September 2017
$18.00, 144 pp.
ISBN-13: 978-1-940595158
Radney Foster must have heard the axiom, “Write what you know,” as his collection of stories For You to See the Stars dips generously into his Del Rio, Texas, childhood and his decades working as a singer-songwriter. This unique project grew out of a short illness when Foster lost his voice and had to face the possibility of a life that did not include singing. In the preface, he notes that he asked himself, “How can I tell stories if I can’t sing?” The story “Sycamore Creek,” which closes the collection, is an attempt to answer this question.
He pitched the story to Shari Smith of Working Title Farm after he was introduced to her Trio project, for which she gives a copy of several books to a song writer and a graphic artist for creative response. Smith was an ideal collaborator for what became both a literary and music endeavor. When Foster’s stories were completed, they were released simultaneously with his CD of the same title, on which he recorded a companion song for each story. Sometimes the song came first; sometimes, the story.
While some of the characters in the stories bear obvious autobiographical details, and many of the stories are set in Foster’s native Texas, he has ramped up the narrative skills of his songwriting to create a parallel world. In the world of his stories, characters straddle the divide between the certainty of Southern Baptists and their skeptical secular neighbors—or offspring; between native-born American citizens and their Hispanic neighbors and workers; between different generations and value systems.
The title story traces the journey of a young man fulfilling a request of his recently deceased father to bring a package to his maternal grandfather, who has been estranged from the family. Beau goes into the high elevations of West Texas, against his mother’s will, and reunites with his grandfather Joaquin, a Vietnam veteran with the gift of water witching. He lives with Susanna, an artist, who tells Beau, “It’d gotta get dark enough for you to see the stars.”
Set in 1963, “Bridge Club” examines the rituals that draw a family together, rich with details of home, music, backyard make believe. The story begins as a humorous childhood recollection of the narrator, a young boy who embarrasses his mother in front of her bridge club. He sets the scene at his middle class Texas home, which he flees as his mother’s guests arrives, heading to his granny’s house in their back yard. The story takes a somber turn, though, as the family learns of Kennedy’s assassination. They spend the rest of the day together drawing comfort by sharing music, a tradition that continued through their lives together. The same sense of music as comforting ritual recurs in “Sycamore Creek, a coming of age story of deep friendships and love that could fill a second soundtrack for the book
While many of the stories are realistic and reminiscent, others take leaps. “Another Dragon to Slay” reads like a Civil War story, despite references to “Afghanistan in ’04.” An alternate history unfolds, set in a future United American Republic, after a war with Mexico. In the aftermath, the rights of individuals are based on different levels of citizenship obtained by bloodline, marriage, outright purchase, or earned through a Catch-22 system of military service granting one the privileges of “First Citizenship.” Congressional seats are openly obtained by the highest bidder in the Senatorial Auction. The protagonist, Mota, called Old Man by his commanding officer to his face and behind his back by his men, finds himself and his company sent into an impossible situation because they’re considered expendable. Though set in a fictional period, the theme of who really counts in America rings as current as today’s newspaper.
Throughout Foster’s prose, readers will find jewels of poetry, language that invites one to savor the images and ideas. Such is his description of the devout nature of Maggie in “Sycamore Creek,” about whom he says, “Her joy was singing hymns in harmony. Her righteousness was teaching the three Rodriguez children. . . to read. . . Her prayer was all day long when no one was looking. Her grace was believing in me.”
Radney Foster got through his illness and his voice returned, but he also found his voice in these pages of narrative.
Nancy Posey lives in Brentwood, TN, where she is an adjunct English professor after retiring from full-time teaching in North Carolina. An avid reader, she participates in two book clubs and blogs about books at discriminatingreader.com. She also writes poetry, plays the mandolin, and always enjoys learning something new.
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