

In “Race,” Hakim, a Kansan of Egyptian heritage, is a glassblower living in Colorado. He is middle-aged and divorced; he misses his daughter, uses his talent to make tourist baubles and is viewed with suspicion by many locals, even though he’s been a member in good standing of the local chamber of commerce for 15 years. After Hakim collapses during a half-marathon and is revived, strangers seek him out—what did he see? What did he learn? “I learned how easy it was to die, but how hard it was to go back to the beginning,” he tells them.

In “La Mer de l’Ouest,” Scott Atherton is a white South Carolina lawyer whose new clients, a black couple, want a straw buyer for a house in an exclusive white enclave. Atherton is a liberal in a town where he’s tolerated by the local conservative establishment—until he crosses a line and becomes an activist. His wife accuses him of “glamorizing criminal behavior.” but he defends himself by replying, “The Boston Tea Party was a crime. So was Rosa Parks’ getting on that bus. … Did we not have an obligation to resist what we thought was evil?”

Adult siblings with childhood grievances spend a weekend divvying up their father’s possessions in “Seeing Desirable Things,” a scenario guaranteed to end in catastrophe. Allen, contemplating birds on the beach in the aftermath, stares at one and wonders: “How did it know of danger? … How did it know where to go in winter, when to leave, how to navigate?” If only we humans could know those things, too.

Birds in this collection represent the self in perpetual motion, forever seeking. Lauren, the birder in the title story, asks what might be the question that underlies the volume: “When the spirit is always on the move, how can it settle?” Nelson seems to suggest that the answer is found in seeking dignity and a measure of social justice—doing your part to create an even field on which to play the game.

This review originally appeared in High Country News.

The Spirit Bird: Stories

By Kent Nelson

University of Pittsburgh Press

336 pages, $24.95