There’s a lot going on in Whistle Pig, Maryland, the fictional Appalachian town at the center of National Book Award finalist Patricia Henley’s short story collection Apple & Palm. Art is made and sold, crops are harvested, babies are born, and people die, sometimes of old age and sometimes of violence, but for the most part, people care for one another and pay attention to who is doing what, and why. At the same time, Apple & Palm, a literal street corner in Whistle Pig, presents a raft of characters who defy stereotypes and are neither uneducated nor politically or socially conservative, a sharp counter to conventional depictions of Appalachia’s residents.
Instead, they’re white people of all ages and sexualities who are grappling with aging and disability and pursuing both romantic and platonic relationships. Fidelity, infidelity, parenting, alcoholism, interpersonal violence, and the search for financial security undergird the eight linked stories in this well-wrought and evocative collection.
In “Currency,” 100-year-old Australian-born Roxy McAuliffe looks back on several relationships that took place more than 60 years ago and juxtaposes her experiences with those of Lulu, her grandson Norman’s philandering wife. Lulu’s frequent visits to see Roxy bring the old woman tremendous joy, and the two talk, gossip, listen to music, and dance together, pleasures that allow Roxy to forgive and forget behaviors that she might condemn in others. It’s a touching, if uncommon, reaction.
In fact, forgiving others is far more difficult for Jill Zebrak, a 64-year-old single woman who is the emotional glue keeping many of Whistle Pig’s townspeople from faltering. But when her 83-year-old father hooks up with Adele Pratt, someone Jill went to school with, her usually steely resolve begins to unravel and before she is able to hunker down and do what has to be done for herself and her neighbors, she needs to explore a family tragedy that took place when she was a child. The way the incident altered her relationship with her father is parsed in “What Goes Around.” It is both poignant and honest.
“Truer Words” introduces Harper, Jill’s newly disabled niece, who hooks up with Norman, Roxy’s artist grandson. Now living apart from wife Lulu and his children, Norman and Harper make no promises and have no expectations about the liaison’s permanence or meaning. Later, when Lulu and Harper meet, the contact is rancor-free. “You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last,” Lulu tells her. “He can’t keep it where it belongs.” As the two talk, they reach a mutual understanding that exemplifies female solidarity and models camaraderie and coexistence.
“Smorgasbord” brings Claire back to Whistle Pig, her hometown, after she is denied tenure and her marriage crumbles, while “Sally’s Tangent” explores one woman’s flight to the Bahamas in the aftermath of failed fertility treatments.
A wide range of emotional responses form the crux of the stories in Apple & Palm and Henley’s writing is somehow both spare and detailed. Each story packs a lot of material into a few pages without ever feeling overloaded. It’s masterfully done. That said, these are not neat tales with easy or happy endings; nonetheless, they showcase acceptance of what is while simultaneously striving for more. Henley’s writing is a feat of balance and artistry.
Jill is a case in point. “She weaned herself from God in her twenties,” Henley writes. “She was a crone. Not ugly or cruel. More the wise woman crone, in her better moments. When others turned to God, she turned to herself. It had been a lonely life that eventually became mere solitude. Even the word was too grand for the way she lived.”
This kind of self-awareness is as precise as it is rare, and makes Apple & Palm an engaging and thought-provoking read. All told, the book is an enlightening look at complex, diverse, and wily people who can’t be easily pigeonholed. Readers will likely be glad to make their acquaintance.
Apple & Palm: Stories, By Patricia Henley
Cornerstone Press, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
174 pages, $24.95.
Release date: March 10, 2026. Available for pre-order.
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