From the Publisher

Scott Snyder's Voodoo Heart just blew me away. These dispatches from disaffected but strangely likeable American oddities have much the same effect as good American roots music: their simplicity is deceptive, their emotional power considerable. And at some point between the mystery-blimp of "Blue Yodel" and the World War I-era Curtis Jenny of "The Star Attraction of 1919," you may discover that Snyder's plain folks have stolen your heart. I think what impressed me most about these stories--even the ones in which terrible things happen--was their warmth and humanity. Even when his characters are at their worst, Scott Snyder never abandons them. These are stories that welcome the reader in, and fully reward his interest. Sometimes horrifying, often absurd, full of characters afraid to commit (and who sometimes commit anyway), this is a debut worthy of T. Coraghessan Boyle's If The River Was Whiskey. I couldn't put it down."
—:(Stephen King)

(starred review) - Booklist

The dialogue is snappy, the characters sharp, and the story lines consuming...Snyder is masterful, and the fact that he draws on uniquely American symbols, stories, and songs makes Voodoo Heart outstanding and unusual, and a spectacular debut.

Publishers Weekly

Reading Scott Snyder's accomplished first story collection, Voodoo Heart, is a little like watching a magician pull rabbits out of a hat. No matter how many times you've seen the trick performed, you still marvel that someone has figured out not only how to do it but, more important, how to persuade the audience that no one has ever done it exactly that way before. Snyder's particular sleight of hand enables him to make the unlikely seem disturbingly familiar; he bends and stretches the laws of ordinary causality just enough so that, when his narratives snap back, there's a twang that reverberates after the final line. His protagonists are young romantics worried about the conflict between authenticity and adventurousness, torn between a self-protective longing for solitude and a longing for some deeper loyalty to another human being. What they mistake for life-changing passion may turn out to be simple-and terrible-misunderstanding, and a chance encounter may initiate a chain of events that will alter them forever. Many reside just outside odd or intentional communities (a boot camp for troubled teens, a summer haven for overweight kids) in which they take an almost anthropological interest. Others are in transit or in flight, reluctant to confront that what looked like a whimsical job opportunity or a brief vacation from ordinary life may in fact be a permanent dead end. In the title story, a young couple renovates an abandoned Florida mansion that borders on a women's prison-a proximity that intensifies the hero's most secret and desperate concerns about his true nature. In another tale, an equally conflicted young man meets a celebrity convalescing from drastic plastic surgery and becomes involved in a meteoric affair that flames out as her recovery changes his sense of what it means to be injured. In "Dumpster Tuesday," a guy who seems to have everything (or just enough) loses it all when his girlfriend leaves him for a brain-damaged, improbably charismatic country singer, and in "About Face," a trumpet player working at a juvenile detention center learns a painful lesson about illness, compassion and the mysteries of sex. Suffused with sly humor, sympathy and high spirits, the stories in Voodoo Heart are giddy with the thrill of discovering what can be done with words, what you can make happen on the page. The result is as irreducible and rewarding as making playing cards disappear or pulling gold coins out of thin air. Francine Prose's most recent book is Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles. Her new book, Reading like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and Those Who Want to Write Them will be published in the fall. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Short stories from an author who's starred in Zoetrope, Tin House, and other venues. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Seven solidly constructed stories celebrate characters who are lost and don't necessarily wish to be found. Notable here is newcomer Snyder's thoughtful development of characters and themes. "Blue Yodel," set in 1918, describes the increasing desperation of a lovelorn young man in pursuit of a zeppelin bearing away the woman he loves. Pres works as a barrel-watcher at Niagara Falls, and his failure to understand the lure of the falls points to "some larger flaw" in his nature; while Claire, a mime in a Buffalo wax museum, proves herself brightly capable of spontaneity and escapes him. Similarly, in "The Star Attraction of 1919," a barnstormer down on his luck accidentally lands in the middle of an outdoor wedding party in Kansas and, in a curious turn of events, takes off with the bride. Although they become a star aviation attraction and even fall in love, what attracts Helen is not John per se but the thrill of danger and flight. Other stories delineate with chilling precision and depth the haplessness of emotionally diffident characters. "Wreck" tracks a young man derailed from a childhood accident, unable to re-route himself to a successful life. The title story finds a young couple ensconced in a beautiful Florida house that happens to adjoin a women's prison; as the young man's interest in spying on the inmates increases, so does his fear of making a commitment to his girlfriend. "Happy Fish, Plus Coin" (the name of the Chinese restaurant in Orlando where the protagonists meet) painstakingly develops an unlikely friendship between a young man trying to flee the tentacles of his rich family and a wheelchair-bound confidence man who has escaped death three times-a truly bizarre tale.A pleasure to read, particularly for Snyder's careful attention to his craft.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Reading Group Guide
• Read an Excerpt
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide

1. Why is this book named after the story Voodoo Heart? Is this story a good representation of all the stories in the collection? Is it the best story?

2. A lot of the struggles and heartache within these stories are the result of irrational hopes and beliefs. Do you think the author shows normal feelings and thoughts or are they exceptional and bizarre?

3. Many of the characters go to great lengths for love or escape. Do you think you could ever be compelled to go to these lengths?

4. What if the characters just told each other the truth? How would that change the stories? For example, what if L.J. told the truth to Gay in Happy, Fish Plus Coin, about why he was hiding?

5. These characters seemingly never live in the present–they are always looking to the past or toward the future. What makes us look for the unseen or the ideal? Do you think this is why the characters live so out of the ordinary?

6. All of the stories in Voodoo Heart show isolated worlds away from reality–amusement parks, prison, camp, a wrecking yard, a sideshow attraction. Why do you think the author includes these places? What do they add to the stories? Do you think it is strange that all the romantic relationships start up in these places?

7. In About Face, Miles Fergus states “It’s funny how a hit like that can be all it takes to knock you off course. Hardly more than a tap or nudge, and suddenly you find that you’ve become someone entirely new, some dark version of your self you never thought possible.” Do you think this statement is true? Can a person turn down the wrong path because of one incident?Can you point out the event in the stories where the characters turn this corner?

8. All of the characters have a side that is never quite explained. In Happy, Fish Plus Coin, why do you think Gay is running? In Blue Yodel, do you think something happened between Claire and Pres that would give Pres reason to think she ran off in a blimp? Why do you think the characters are never fully explained?

9. Why do you think some of the stories are in first person and some are in third? How do these points of view add to and change the story?

10. There are references to blimps or planes in all of these stories. Country music is also referenced in all of them. Why do you think this is? Do these references add to the stories? How?

11. Many of the main characters are men who get hurt by women. Do the male characters bring pain upon themselves?

12. These stories are set in distinctly American settings. Why do you think this is? Do you think Snyder is commenting on the American experience?

13. What do you think happens to the characters after the stories end? What do you think happens to Jacob in Voodoo Heart?

14. What is the overall message of these stories? Is there one? How would you describe this book to a friend? Funny, bizarre, magical, sad, truthful…?

Read an Excerpt

Read a Sample Chapter

Voodoo Heart

Random House

Chapter One

Voodoo Heart

i.

My girlfriend and I are not rich people. Not by a longshot. But together we own a mansion--one of the last real mansions in central Florida. It was built by a family of lemon farmers back in 1869, almost one hundred and fifty years ago. We put less than eleven hundred dollars down, hardly anything, but the house has over twenty rooms in all: five bedrooms, a library with a vaulted ceiling, a study, even a garden room that looks out on three full acres of wild backyard.

The morning the realtor first showed us the place, I was sure she'd made some kind of mistake. The other houses she'd taken us to see had been small: one- and two-bedroom apartments mostly. And then, out of nowhere, this.

For a long time, Laura and I stood on the front lawn, just staring up at the house. It had a wraparound porch. There were four stone chimneys rising from the roof. Laura had a good job at the aquarium, and I managed a major wrecking yard, but even so, how could something like this be in our price range?

"I know what you're thinking!" said the realtor. She had to speak loudly to be heard over the persistent buzzing from insects hidden in the foliage. "But the price is just what I said. I'm tempted to buy this one myself."

I studied the house, trying to take in the whole giant sprawl. Granted, it wouldneed work. The place looked like it had stood vacant a long time, abandoned for ten, maybe even fifteen years. Ferns had sprouted though the slats of the porch. The columns were covered in a scaly silver mold. There were mushrooms growing in one of the rain gutters, a whole row, white with red spots, like tiny bloodstained umbrellas.

The grounds were in bad shape too: everything wild and overgrown, choked by weeds and bramble. Long tatters of moss hung from the trees.

Still, there was no disguising what lay beneath all the disrepair. With time and effort, this could be a wonderland for us.

Laura must have sensed my excitement. "This house is incredible. But it'll be way too much work. I mean, look." She waved a hand over the tall, weedy grass, which came all the way up to our thighs. "The yard alone will take weeks to clear."

"We wouldn't tackle the whole thing all at once," I said. "We could just do a little every day."

Laura turned to examine the house again. I spotted a tick crawling up the back of her shirt and quickly plucked it off before she could notice.

"I don't know, Jake," she said. "If it's so great, why has it been standing here, empty, year after year? What's wrong with it?"

"So," I said to the realtor. "What's wrong with it?"

The realtor shrugged, mopping the sweat from her face. Her name was Joyce. She was an older lady, a grandmotherly type; she wore her white hair in a bun; her sneakers were brand-new. The house had been hard to find. It lay off the main road, hidden behind the old lemon fields. Walking over from where we'd parked had been a big exertion for Joyce.

"Nothing's wrong with this place, love," she said. "People are just afraid of privacy, I suppose."

I waited for her to go on. "You're sure? There's no catch?"

"Fess up, Joyce," said Laura.

Joyce sighed and wiped her glasses on her shorts. "Look. The only thing I can think of that might have kept people away is the camp. There's a camp nearby."

"A camp? Like a camp for kids?" Laura said.

"No. It's a camp for ladies," said Joyce. "It's more like a retreat."

"Like a spa?" I was intrigued; I'd never been to a real spa before. I pictured myself relaxing in pits of bubbling mud.

"Not exactly a spa," said Joyce.

"Not exactly how?" Laura asked.

Joyce picked a daisy from the brush and sniffed the petals. "It's a federal retreat."

"A federal retreat like a prison?" said Laura, sounding alarmed.

"I suppose it's sort of like that," Joyce said. "But it's strictly a white-collar facility. It's not like there are any violent offenders in there or anything. This is a place for society ladies."

"A jail for them," said Laura.

"Laura, it's not something to worry about," said Joyce. "It's practically
a resort."

Laura turned to me. "Jacob, I don't want to live near a prison. What if we were here and there was a jailbreak or something? Those women would make a beeline straight for our house."

I noticed a glimmer of excitement in Joyce's expression at hearing Laura refer to the house as "ours."

"You heard Joyce," I said. "It's not that kind of place. It's for society ladies." I made a tea-sipping gesture.

"I've heard of some very high-profile women spending time there," Joyce said, swatting at a cloud of mosquitoes. "Remember Shirley Sayles, the famous golfer? She bet all that money on the U.S. Open? The one she was playing in? She's at the retreat right now."

"Listen to that," I said. "Shirley Sayles."

"Maybe we should look at something else," Laura said.

"Come on." I stepped onto the front porch, which groaned loudly.

"Jacob," said Laura.

But I was already opening the front door.



The inside of the house was dark and cavernous, with a fog of dust rolling across the floor. Trees stood crowded against the windows, their green-and-yellow leaves pressed to the glass like children's hands.

As I stepped into the parlor, I could feel the temperature dropping around me. The room was empty except for a burned-out chandelier reaching down from the high ceiling. I glanced around, examining the peeling wallpaper, the molding sculpted along the ceiling's edge. I already knew that this was the house for us. It had stood for over a hundred years, like a fortress hidden in the woods. Nothing about it was cheap or makeshift. The beams supporting the ceiling looked like they were carved from stone.

It didn't take long for the house to win Laura over, either. The touches were what got her, all the charming details: the claw-foot tub in the master bathroom, cracked but still usable. The carved lemons at the ends of the banisters. The small stained glass window in the parlor door, round as a coin.

What really brought her around, though, was the garden room. It lay at the south end of the first floor and extended out from the rest of the house, overlooking the sloping backyard. The curtains were drawn when we entered, and the room was especially dark, except for a trickle of light seeping in through the far end of the ceiling. I figured there was a crack in the roof, but when we walked over, we saw that in fact, in a certain spot, the ceiling rose and gave way to a small crystal dome. Laura's face lit up when she saw it, the gentle swell of glass, the elegant iron webbing. The dome was filthy with soot, but when she reached up and wiped off one of the panels, a spear of sunlight pierced the room.

"Romantic," said Joyce, and then coughed from the dust.



Of course, even now, six months after we moved in, we still have lots to do. If you came over to our house today, you'd find some rooms fully furnished and others completely bare. If you chose to open the sliding door to the library, you'd find it thoroughly decorated--a sofa by the fireplace, a glass coffee table, the towering bookshelves lined with books. But, on the other hand, if you picked the door at the end of the second-floor hallway to open instead, you'd find a room with nothing in it but an old electric picture of a beach hanging on the wall. When the picture is plugged in, the palm trees sway gently in the breeze, the waves sparkle and roll across the white sand. A flying fish even jumps out of the water, then slaps back down.

There are a few rooms Laura and I haven't even begun yet, storage closets mostly, little side rooms with shelves built into the walls. We leave the doors to them closed for days at a time, weeks. Sometimes we'll forget one exists altogether, until one day when we happen to notice a doorknob sticking out of the wall. Just the other morning I opened the door to a storeroom near the basement and found a dead snake lying on the floor. It must have been there for months; all that was left of the corpse was a skeleton. A winding comb of bones coiled in the dust.

All the space used to make Laura nervous, the empty rooms, the dark door frames. Now and then she'd panic and call to me from wherever she was in the house and I'd have to come up from the cellar, or down from the study, and stay with her for a while.

Recently, though, I bought a pair of walkie-talkies from a toy store, so that whenever we're working on different rooms we can stay in contact. We've started making up tag names for each other, like truckers.

"Kitty Cat, this is Hunka Luv. What is your twenty? Over," I say, the plastic receiver to my mouth.

"Well, hey there, Hunka Luv," says Laura. "I am currently en route to the shower, over."

We sand, and we paint, and we drill, and every day the house progresses. The old layers of wallpaper are scraped off. Little by little the floors brighten, revealing rich swirls and knots in the wood grain. The chimneys are flushed out, and suddenly a cool, sweet draft flows through every room.

Our bedroom is my favorite place in the house. It sits at the top of a wide central tower, and it's round, with shuttered windows that look out over the treetops. The ceiling is high and cone-shaped, pointy as a witch's hat. If we forget to shut the windows at night, fruit bats fly in and hang from the rafters like little leather change purses.

Laura's almost finished with the garden room. She removed the heavy curtains. She cleaned the dome so that the glass sparkles in the sunlight. I told her I'd cut down some of the vines lashed across the windows if she wanted me to, as they obscured the view, but she said to just leave them.

"They make the room feel like a tree house," she said. "I like it this way."

She keeps a bunch of pillows scattered around, big satin pillows with tassels on the corners, and I often wake up on weekend mornings to find her already downstairs, lying beneath the bright dome, reading the newspaper in her nightgown and sunglasses.



I chase Laura up the creaking spiral staircase, laughing, both of us naked. I carry her to the windowsill, her arms around my neck, and I make love to her with the whole blue sky behind us.

Then, when we're done, I'll sit with her while she takes a bath in the giant cauldron of our marble tub, her knees poking up through the water like tiny islands of pink sand. Sometimes I'll read her part of a book or a magazine. Other times, while Laura soaks, I'll amuse her by spying on the women in the prison near our home, the federal work camp. I bought a telescope from an antique store in town and set it up by the window. When I look into the eyepiece, it's like I've been transported right inside the camp among the residents.

Joyce was telling the truth, too. The camp's grounds are beautiful, with shaded walking paths and picnic tables set up beneath the many trees. There's a pond populated by giant goldfish, a vegetable garden that the women tend in the afternoons. The facility is entirely open, too. There aren't any barbed wire fences or guard towers, just a bright green sprawl of grass and trees around which the ladies are allowed to wander freely for most of the day. The only thing bounding the property at all is a bright yellow line painted in the grass along the prison perimeter. The paint contains fluorescent chemicals, and at night the line glows an eerie, spaceship green.

"What are they doing now?" Laura said to me the other day. She was lying in the tub.

I used the telescope to scan the grounds for any of Laura's favorites. The women she most liked to hear about were the high profile inmates, the society wives and politicians and celebrities who'd lived all sorts of glamorous lives before ending up at the camp. One resident was the owner of a baseball team, another was a restaurateur.
There was a famous jazz drummer, the CEO of a baby food company, even a world-renowned eye surgeon. I don't know about Laura, but sometimes I actually felt a strange surge of pride knowing that such a cluster of accomplished women was gathered so close to our home.

I tried to find something interesting to report, but most of the women had headed inside the canteen for supper. A couple of them were jogging along the gravel exercise path. One, the baseball team owner, was reading the newspaper beneath a tree. It was nearly sunset and the line painted around the prison had just started to glow.

"The chef, the really fat lady? She and your favorite girl, Shirley the golf pro--they're fighting it out in the yard."

"Sounds exciting," said Laura. She knew I was lying. Nothing like that ever happened at the camp.

"It's ugly," I said, turning back to Laura. "Shirley just pulled out a shank. Things are looking bad for the chef."

"Her ass is grass," Laura said, smiling.

She yawned and let her head fall to the side and I studied her face for a moment--studied the soft shells of her eyelids; her lips; a tendril of wet, brown hair curled against her cheek. I felt a pull in my chest so hard it frightened me.

"I'm going to marry you in this house," I said. "We can have the wedding in the yard after I clear it out."

Laura wrung the water from her hair. "Is that a proposal?"

"I guess I can do better than that," I said.

She laughed. "I should hope so." Then she closed her eyes and let her body slide down into the water.

"Did you know," she said, "that in exactly one hundred days from tomorrow, you and I will have been together for five years? I was doing the math in the car the other day. Isn't that crazy? Five years."

I leaned over and kissed her on her forehead. "I'll tell you what. If in a hundred days from tomorrow I haven't proposed to you, you can leave me forever."

"Jacob, that's not what I was getting at.&

Continues...

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Excerpted from Voodoo Heart by Scott Snyder Excerpted by permission.
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