Heart Songs and Other Stories

Before she wrote the bestselling Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx was already producing some of the finest short fiction in the country. Here are her collected stories, including two new works never before anthologized.


These stories reverberate with rural tradition, the rites of nature, and the rituals of small town life. The country is blue collar New England; the characters are native families and the dispossessed working class, whose heritage is challenged by the neorural bourgeoisie from the city; and the themes are as elemental as the landscape: revenge, malice, greed, passion. Told with skill and profundity and crafted by a master storyteller, these are lean, tough tales of an extraordinary place and its people.

Annie Proulx is the author of eleven books, including the novels The Shipping News and Barkskins, and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story “Brokeback Mountain,” which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award–winning film. Fen, Bog, and Swamp is her second work of nonfiction. She lives in New Hampshire. 

ISBN: 9780020360759
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Published: March 17, 1995

Elaine Kendall Los Angeles Times Proulx doesn't merely tell her stories or participate in them, but convinces you with every word....You'd have every right to expect that a Hemingway disciple wrote these remarkable stories about life in the Northeastern granite country.Kenneth Rose The New York Times Book Review Compelling...their sometimes enigmatic, often lyrical images seem to complement New England's lavish but barren beauty.Wendy Smith Cleveland Plain Dealer Proulx beautifully evokes the unchanging rhythms of country existence with a deep appreciation for life lived close to the earth....Her prose is supple, strong, and filled with striking images.