Art Notes: Corinth author’s new book continues effort to celebrate rural diversity

The way Catherine Tudish sees it, depictions of rural life in art and media often fall into two camps. Inhabitants are portrayed either as living out a kind of pastoral ideal, or a grueling existence barren of opportunity.

“There’s a diversity of history and people that live in these rural places that I feel isn’t quite appreciated,” Tudish said in a phone interview.

Combatting that oversimplification has been a throughline in her work. “Tenney’s Landing,” a collection of short stories that came out in 2005, traces the intertwining lives of townspeople in rural Pennsylvania, and her 2007 novel “American Cream” follows a woman who returns to her family’s farm after her father injures himself in a tractor accident.

Her new book, “A Thousand Souls: A Novel in Stories,” which came out earlier this month, continues that effort. In the same vein as “Tenney’s Landing,” the book weaves together 14 short stories about the varied, complicated lives of three generations of residents in the fictional town of Neptune, Vt.

A girl overcomes her speech impediment when she talks with a black bear; a sheriff intervenes in a drug operation, then gets caught helping undocumented workers hide from ICE agents; a frustrated wife presents her husband with a nude portrait of herself.

Before moving to Corinth nine years ago, Tudish, who worked as a Valley News reporter in the late 1990s, spent about two decades in Strafford, and the book is infused with the character of the town — the quaint buildings, the closeness of its inhabitants.

“The people that I knew were sort of transformed into these characters,” Tudish said, more as composites than as themselves.

A mailman in the book’s title story, for instance, is based on a real person who lived near Strafford.

Tudish always thought of him as someone who “connected everyone” through his work, she said.

That idea of interconnection, of trading stories, has long fascinated her. In high school she was struck by the travelers in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.”

Her English teacher had the class memorize parts of Chaucer’s 24 stories, passages of which she still remembers.

“The idea of a group of travelers at an inn telling their stories and hearing their different voices and perspectives, there was something about that that I really loved,” Tudish said.

Though her affection for the short story as a literary form has ebbed and flowed over the years, she’s come to appreciate the limitations and possibilities it presents, the way it can draw the reader in close.

“I think a really good short story can have the same effect as a really good poem,” she said.

She felt that intimacy acutely while reading James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues.”

There’s one scene in which a character visits his family’s house on a Sunday afternoon and Tudish said she can “still remember the sensation of reading that feeling as if I was there too in a meaningful way.”

There may be an immediacy to short stories, but the ones in “A Thousand Souls” emerged slowly over about a decade.

The first story in the book, “Keepsake,” about a boy born of an affair who travels to South Carolina to meet his father, came to Tudish first as a single image blooming in her imagination.

She saw a boy about age 13 looking down a set of train tracks as he waited at the platform with his mother. He seemed apprehensive, Tudish recalls.

She didn’t start writing immediately after that, but as she did, in 2010, another story came to her, and she wrote that one, too.

As with “Tenney’s Landing,” she enjoyed experimenting with different voices and perspectives as she moved between stories.

She never set out to write a novel, instead she followed that thread of ideas until she had a collection that felt whole. For that reason, it’s hard for her to say if “A Thousand Souls” has an intended audience.

“I would hope that anyone who enjoyed a short story would find the book appealing,” she said.

Talking to Tudish, I wondered how important it really is to have a particular audience, or roadmap, in mind when working on a piece of writing, which, as a journalist, feels blasphemous even to wonder about.

But perhaps there’s also something to be said for trusting a more meandering process, for following instinct, rather than a concrete plan. It worked for Tudish, at least.

Tudish has several readings of “A Thousand Souls” coming up in the Upper Valley. The first is at Blake Memorial Library in East Corinth at 5 p.m. on Friday, May 15, followed by one at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 26 at the Norwich Bookstore and another at Meadow Meeting House in Corinth at 3 p.m. on Sunday, June 14.

“A Thousand Souls: A Novel in Stories” is available at local bookstores and at barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com.

Warehouse party

Dartmouth College’s three-day New Music Festival, Pharmakon, kicks off Thursday evening. The experimental music festival will take place at The Warehouse, the college’s Sonic Practice MFA performance space at 4 Currier Place. Attendance to the festival is free but visitors are asked to RSVP at https://shorturl.at/0XJBQ.

Bayou boogie

The Filling Station is hosting a “bayou bounce” dance party at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday at the Gates Street bar in White River Junction. Mardi Gras-themed outfits are encouraged. DJ Cartier and DJ Chippendale Cooper will be supplying the tunes. Tickets to the 21+ event are $5 at the door. Learn more @thefillingstationwrj.

Mariachi music

BarnArts’ Global Music Residency artist, mariachi musician Veronica Robles is performing at 7 p.m. this Saturday at Barnard Town Hall. Robles learned mariachi from her grandmother. Since moving to Boston, she’s helped celebrate Latin American culture in the city, including hosting “Orale con Veronica” on the Spanish-language television broadcasting network Telemundo. At Saturday’s performance she’ll be backed by a quartet of string musicians. For tickets ($15-$25 for adults; $10 for youth) and to learn more go to barnarts.org.