“Are you duly concerned with calamitous events?
Are you duly concerned with calamitous events?
Are you duly concerned with calamitous events?
Are you duly concerned with calamitous—"

Immediately upon finishing Rosson’s “Fever House” I practically sprinted to my computer to put anything I could find from him on hold at my local library. “Folk Songs” was all that was available and I picked it up the next day (blessed are we with speedy librarians.) I could’ve rated this 5 stars after the first short story, the one of which three out of four horseman would approve. Or after the one about sobriety and a hearse. The one about masks and lonely men, the sons they create. The one about the orca and the bullet and loss. The very first story in the collection laid a match across a line of gunpowder that trailed and twisted and curved around the other hard, sad stories about hard, sad people until it finally reached my heart and boom.

4.5/5 Rosson is the hammer and I am the nail and together we stick a sign that says “Subtext isn’t always a bad thing” to the wall.