The world of Michael Knight's Dogfight and Other Stories is a languorous dreamland, a place of eerily prescient children and heroic dogs, of naked ladies and the boys and men who pine for them, a place where every adult is uncomfortably single-or shortly about to become so-and whose citizens routinely press their noses against the window of the lives they are trapped in, "huffing brief ghosts of longing against the pane."
Sixteen-year-old Ford of "Gerald's Monkey," a summertime employee at his wealthy uncle's shipyard, enters a world of "honest work" eager to fit in, only to witness failures and lies. Long cowed by his older brother's reckless violence in "A Bad Man So Pretty," Jack musters himself into action finally, and discovers success isn't what he thought it would be. And young Hettie of "Amelia Earhart's Coat," knows she prefers her father's mistress to her mother, but not precisely why. Here, pain is always on the verge of articulation, is always on the tip of the tongue, ". . . like knowing someone is behind a tinted window, even though they can't be seen."
These stories of loss and desire are draped over landscapes as damaged as their characters. The title story, "Dogfight," takes us to the historic battlefield of Shiloh, where two neighbors come to blows over a woman who has betrayed them both, and in "Sleeping with my Dog," a lake studded with cypress stumps, ". . . standing in the water like ruined columns," echoes the internal wreckage of a man deserted by the woman he loves. The smoldering ruin of a burned-down house is the setting of "Tenant," a haunting tale of a man and a dog struggling to find meaning in the suicide of the woman who connected them.
The best stories of Dogfight linger in the consciousness long afterward, whispering-as vaguely as childhood memories-that something bad has happened. Imagistic and beautiful, Dogfight is an impressive debut by a fine young talent.

-Anthony D'Souza