Flying Home (2015) by David Nicholson

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Flying Home: Seven Stories of the Secret City (2015)

by David Nicholson

Washington DC

Washington DC: 6/12

    David Nicholson looks like one of those writers you would call a "writers writer" or "artists artist" which means that people in the know, people in the field, know who he is- the field being writers and teachers of literary fiction in the US.  He has quotes from people who have won major prizes for this, his only collection of fiction (He just published a family history, The Garretts of Columbia, in January of this year and those are his only two books.)  I'd never heard of the publisher either, Paycock Press- which is a very small independent press in Virginia. 

  Flying Home is, yes, a set of interconnected short stories about one neighborhood in Northeast DC, the home of the African American lower middle class, and these stories reflect that milieu.  Youthful mischief, jobs gained and lost, the lore of baseball are all covered and Nicholson maintains the distinctive, low stakes tone throughout.  These folks are deeply rooted in the DC environment and it's hard to imagine their neighborhood changing.