“Everybody’s got some stitch come loose that needs mending.”
Brandon Daily burst onto the scene in 2014 with A Murder Country (Silver Medal, Georgia Author of the Year—First Novel), followed by The Valley in 2016. Daily’s latest release, Darkening, is a collection of short stories, a one-act play, and a novella.
The stories in Darkening don’t neatly fall into a single genre, with everything from (light) horror to sci-fi represented, and settings in the past, present and future. But there is undoubtedly a unifying theme: the ability of humans to nurture hope in even the darkest of times.
From an old hermit in the woods who, despite being blind, shows a boy how to see beyond the grief and guilt that plague him to find meaning and purpose in life (“Loose Stitching”), to a scientist pushing the limits of what it means to be human in his quest for immortality in order to fulfill a promise to his late wife (“Eva’s Story”), to a man whose unique job puts him in the position of receiving phone calls from beyond the grave (“De-Programming”), Daily explores how humans struggle with the complicated emotions that arise in both extraordinary circumstances as well as from the daily grind of simply being alive.
The collection finishes with the one-two punch of Daily’s award-winning one-act play South of Salvation (first prize, CAST Players One Act Play Festival 2012), and a powerful novella entitled The After, in which three very different people—a young woman, a soldier, and an old man—find themselves together in a cave, shut off from a war raging outside. How did each come to be there, and more curiously, why do none of them leave? The characters who inhabit Daily’s writing aren’t looking for easy answers, but all are willing to ask the tough questions… and follow where that leads them.
With Darkening, Daily has proven that he is as adept at the short form as he is the novel, perhaps arguably even better, which is saying something considering the accolades he has collected for his full-length work. In a guest post for this site called “The Short and Long of It,” Daily said, “As a writer, it’s my job to pick the right words and simply trust in their power.” Believe me when I say Daily has picked all the right words, and they are powerful indeed.
Darkening is available from ABC Group Documentation.
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