In Lithuanian Wood

Book excerpt: Fiction.In his beautifully achieved collection... Wendell Mayo explores the hard truths of the post-Iron Curtain era. Through the person of Paul Rood, who takes his enthusiasm for Wait Whitman to a country that has known only the depredations of Nazi and Soviet tyranny for half a century, the reader enters into the recognition of what tyranny, with its attendant corruption, economic exploitation, and cynicism do to the human spirit... It is a book of great humanity and splendid prose (Gladys Swan). ... a marvelous experience. In Lituanian Wood brings the reader a profound, ambitious, and complex vision of a part of the world few of us know... a tare fiction, executed with equally rare skill and compassion (Gordon Weaver).