Authors: Joy Williams
99 Stories of God (9 page)
The silence was not uncomfortable, but it was getting late.
Finally she said: You always wanted to be a poet.
This sometimes worked with her more difficult clients. Or not difficult as much as …
reclusive
. Brought them out a bit.
Nothing. Still nothing. She couldn’t see Him. She needed to find the anchor chain.
Then she thought: Maybe she didn’t have to see Him. Maybe she was putting the cart before the horse in this case. Maybe she should just go directly to the question most everyone had and visualize from there.
What’s going to happen after I’m dead?
The Darkling Thrush
Joy Williams
is the author of such classics of American fiction as
Taking Care
,
Escapes
, and
Breaking and Entering
. Harold Brodkey called her “the most gifted writer of her generation.”
99 Stories of God
, a Byliner Original, marks the publication of her first book of fiction in nearly a decade. She has also written several widely anthologized essays on ecological matters. Williams lives in Arizona, Wyoming, and Florida.
Read more of
Joy Williams’s best stories
at Byliner.com
Photograph by Rollie McKenna
Byliner
works directly with the world’s best writers to deliver great stories to readers. We publish original fiction and nonfiction by top authors, including bestsellers such as Amy Tan’s
Rules for Virgins
, Margaret Atwood’s
Positron
, Jon Krakauer’s
Three Cups of Deceit
, Ann Patchett’s
The Getaway Car
, Nick Hornby’s
Everyone’s Reading Bastard
, Buzz Bissinger’s
After Friday Night Lights
, Chuck Palahniuk’s
Phoenix
, Alexandra Fuller’s
Falling
, Richard Russo’s
Nate in Venice
, and Sebastian Junger’s
A World Made of Blood
. These quick-read stories are written to be read in two hours or less, and can be purchased individually through major digital bookstores. The entire Byliner Originals library is available online to Byliner subscribers, who also get access to premium content from our by-invitation community of writers—including thousands of rarely seen and exclusive stories by bestselling authors.
Enjoyed the story you just finished?
Turn the page for our recommendations on which Byliner Original to read next. Or visit
Byliner.com
for the full list of Byliner titles.
99 Stories of God
, you’ll also enjoy …
By Richard Powers
On a tour of the bubbling fumaroles of Yellowstone park, Anca, a rising-star biologist, sneaks off to steal samples of an ancient bacterium. Her off-and-on boyfriend, Warren the statistician, frowns on the behavior, until their analysis of the cells’ ancient DNA chains reveals a pattern too regular to be anything but deliberate. Is it the signature of the Creator himself? Or a message left billions of years ago by an alien life form? In
Genie,
master fiction writer Richard Powers goes sci-fi, to delightful and deranging effect.
99 Stories of God
, you’ll also enjoy …
Inside the Catholic Church and the Mysterious Process of Anointing the Holy Dead
By Bill Donahue
Stigmata. Self-mortification. Miracles.
It takes a lot to become a saint in the eyes of the Catholic Church. The journey to canonization is long (sometimes, as in the case of Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian who just got the nod from the Vatican, it can take centuries), lurid (decayed body parts play a role), and, nowadays, surprisingly cutting-edge. (Miracles can be determined through MRIs.) This rollicking yet thorough investigation of the Church’s most mysterious tradition provides a fascinating inside look into how the holy earn their places in heaven and introduces us to America’s newest saint.
99 Stories of God
, you’ll also enjoy …
A Son Discovers Clues to God
By Walter Kirn
Millie Kirn’s spunk and love of literature helped shape her son. She was a voracious reader who “held conventional wisdom in disdain, delighted in seeing hypocrisy exposed, arrogance leveled, and complacency shaken.” After she died, Walter Kirn was sorting through her effects when he came across a King James Study Bible. In his grief, he opened the volume and discovered a glorious profusion of notes in his mother’s familiar handwriting. Inspired by her brash, iconoclastic annotations and following them across the biblical landscape like crumbs, he set about rereading the Old Testament for the first time since he was a child, and sees its familiar heroes in a fresh, often comic light.
My Mother’s Bible
is a profound reevaluation of God’s nature as embodied in the Old Testament, shaped by a son’s and mother’s enduring love for reading and for each other.