Jim Heynen is perhaps best known for his short-short stories about "the boys." He has published widely as the author of nonfiction, poetry, and novels and short fiction for both adults and young readers, most recently Ordinary Sins and The Fall of Alice K. His stories about "the boys" have often been featured on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," as well as on radio in both Sweden and Denmark. Minnesota astronaut George Pinky Nelson took a taped collection of the stories for bedtime listening on his last space mission. Born on a farm in Northwest Iowa, Heynen was formerly the Books Editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and now lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Awards
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (2)
Young Hoosier Book Award
American Library Association's Best Nonfiction Books of 1990, Finalist
Modeled after the character sketches of Theophrastus, these stories deftly introduce a series of oddly recognizable individuals. In these brief interactions—moving from a nightly Sad Hour hosted by a bar to the moonlit sandbox of a retired army general—we see not just the richness of these characters but ourselves.
On the surface, Alice Marie Krayenbraak has it all: she’s beautiful and witty, a star student and a gifted athlete. But nothing is as it seems: the family farm is failing, Alice’s mother awaits the apocalypse, her parents are planning to send her special-needs sister away—and Alice has just fallen in love.
