“The language in the stories of Behold Faith zings with a reconstituted, hard-boiled timber, a cacophony of marbling to the high protein meat of its emotion. Tom Noyes is a master at rendering the work-a-day world and the inarticulate but dead-on accurate poetry of these average Joes. These stories reach the level of the sublime-est sublime.”—Michael Martone, author of Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler’s List

“Noyes depicts the joys and sorrows, the disorder and coming-to-terms with, that we know in our bones. He nails language to the page, the shifts in tone and inflection that enliven and enrich these compassionate stories. He is unflinchingly writing about what it means to be alive here at the beginning of the twenty-first century.”—Darrell Spencer, author of Caution: Men in Trees, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award

“Characters as real as your neighbors, situations as dire as those between your ears. These are our imagined histories—full of necessary hope, each riven with rue. Clearly, Mr. Noyes is a writer whose work costs him more than time to get on the page. He is a writer who wishes to turn time in the direction of beauty.”—Lee K. Abbott, author of Wet Places at Noon

“Noyes’ characters and their worlds are familiar ones, grocery stores, truck cabs, etc., and yet each of them explode into new territory with wit, and irony, and humor. Tom Noyes is a master at showing how the strange universe of human desire can open, suddenly, to hope. What joy there is in this reading!”—W. Scott Olsen, Editor of A Year in Place

In sometimes humorous and sometimes tragic, even violent, contexts, the characters in this first collection of fifteen stories struggle to fathom the present complexities and circumstances of their lives. Here are ordinary people trying to come to grips with the implications of where they’ve been and prepare themselves for where they’re headed. Here are a butcher contemplating the show business dreams of his young assistant; an elementary school teacher dealing with the violent aftermath of her husband’s infidelity; a young man driving to make up with his pregnant girlfriend caught in this year’s Blizzard of the Century; a minister reconsidering his vocation as he races through the aisles of a grocery store; a minor league baseball mascot trying desperately to salvage his love life and the dignity and hope of his city; a young boy, anxious to impress his father, losing a finger to an axe; and a high school football player simultaneously confused and awed by his own mystical visions. All these stories seek to interrogate and render in genuine and unflinching ways the nature of doubt, delusion, disillusion and, surprisingly, the potentially rescuing powers of faith and grace. They are, above all, honest and compassionate stories. Here is a writer you can trust; here are people you have known.

Tom Noyes teaches creative writing at Indiana State University. His stories have been published in a number of journals and magazines, including American Literary Review, Ascent, and High Plains Literary Review. His work has been a finalist in a number of competitions, including the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Breadloaf Prize, and the Sandstone Prize. Three of his stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

2002, 5½ x 8½,
226 pages (Dufour Editions)
ISBN 0-8023-1338-8 Paper $14.95