The Metal Shredders
John Bonner is sure that anytime now he will recover from the sting of his recent separation from his wife. And he’s begun to wonder if he truly wants to spend the rest of his days running the family scrap-metal business, an operation where his employees are likely to have made the very license plates they now shred. His sister, Octavia, has just returned to Ohio from Boston to nurture the pain of her own broken relationship, and she is more certain: Following in the footsteps of their imperious father is a recipe for emotional disaster.
But then two of John’s more eccentric workmen discover thousands of dollars stashed in the trunk of a car, the remains of a drug deal gone bad. The question of what to do with this unexpected cash draws John and his sister into the lives of their newfound collaborators, and sends them all on a surprising journey of high jinx and the heart.
In The Metal Shredders, Nancy Zafris offers up a refreshingly wise, offbeat, and thoroughly convincing look at blue-collar America. Hers is a world rich in humor, steeped in closely held traditions, and filled with gently endearing, slightly crazed characters trying to discover just who they are. In the process they discover much about love, loyalty, family obligation, class—and yes, scrap.
Nancy Zafris is the series editor for the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction, a position she took after nine years as fiction editor of The Kenyon Review. Her other books include The People I Know, Lucky Strike, and The Home Jar. She is the recipient of many awards, two National Endowment for the Arts grants and has taught at many universities, including Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic as a Fulbright Fellow. Each June she teaches at the Kenyon Review Adult Summer Workshop, where she is also associate director.
