Review of Father's Day by Sefton Eisenhart
by Andy Zeigert
1 min read
Father's Day by Sefton Eisenhart | ★★★★★
I'm a fan of a certain kind of crime writing. Big-city organized crime? Sure, I'll take it. Urban low lifes eking out a living a la Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, not to mention the century of writers that influenced them? Yeah, I'm into that. But there's something special about the rural, small-potatoes crime stories that Sefton Eisenhart's latest story, Father's Day, embodies that appeals to me.
Maybe it's my small-town, midwest origins, having grown up around the kinds of people that populate stories like these, with their desperation mixed with a deep sense of pride, their fucked-up bonds to family and community.
Anyway, it's a brief foray into a world that I'd gladly spend more time in. I kept thinking back to Frank Bill's collection of Ohio River Valley miscreants in Crimes in Southern Indiana. Ida from Father's Day would have fit right in.
As a bonus, Nantucket Lit has published a lovely limited edition of Father's Day in chapbook format, typeset using a vintage electric typewriter. It lends the story a timeless quality, something from a world where the internet hasn't quite permeated. Read up on the typesetting on Nantucket Lit's website.