In Christ There Is No East or West

Patrick Greenan is a freelance writer living in Niagara Falls.

Four of the nine short stories in this collection have been previously
published, though none in book form. The title story won the Black
Warrior Annual Fiction Prize (1986), and was anthologized in The New
Generation.

The stories here convey a picture of lives led without purpose, focus,
or direction. Not knowing what they want (or even what they don’t
want), Nussey’s protagonists “lead lives of quiet desperation.”
They yearn for meaning for their lives but exist in a spiritual void.

Yet the desire for some kind of metaphysical validation persists. The
character Larry in “City of God” states it most explicitly: “I’m
aiming for the particular intersection of personal history and larger
time, that locus where final meaning will shed its light.”

Nussey occasionally strains too hard to create an image in the
reader’s mind, but, overall, this is a fine piece of work from an
author we can expect to hear from again.