THE WARS OF HEAVEN by Richard...

THE WARS OF HEAVEN by Richard Currey (Vintage: $9.00). Currey sets his short stories in the rugged countryside of West Virginia, a harsh, unforgiving land that marks its inhabitants. The brief stories that fill about two-thirds of this collection showcase the author’s terse intensity. A boy struggles to save the life of the retarded younger brother he’s had to care for; a dying robber attempts to rationalize his actions in a mental letter to his mother. In “Believer’s Flood,” an aging union organizer describes his battles with mining-company strike-breakers, beginning his recollections with the modest disclaimer, “My story is no regal tale.” The unfocused novella “The Love of a Good Woman” seems far less convincing: The drunken, ne’er-do-well narrator becomes a successful pitchman and a circus clown a little too effortlessly.