Bad Faith

by Theodore Wheeler

With results both liberating and disastrous, the characters of Bad Faith flee the trappings of contemporary domestic life. A father visits a college friend in El Salvador rather than face difficulties with the birth of his third child; a boy comes to terms with his fractured family and the disabled father responsible for his care after his mom is stationed overseas; a biracial man journeys across Nebraska for the funeral of his white mother and strikes up an improbable if dishonest relationship with a centenarian Irish woman; and in the title story, the running narrative of a pathetic yet compelling ladies man culminates in an unexpected and deadly confrontation. In Theodore Wheeler's collection of prize-winning stories, the herd can't always outpace the predator.

Genres: Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

Published July 12, 2016

About the author

Theodore Wheeler is the author of three novels, most recently THE WAR BEGINS IN PARIS (Little Brown, 2023). He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Nebraska Arts Council, and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. He worked for fourteen years as a journalist who covered law and politics, and his fiction is often influenced by real life and historical events. Wheeler and his family operate Dundee Book Company, an independent neighborhood bookshop, and he is a professor in the English Department at Creighton University. A native Iowan, he now lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

Reviews

[Chris Blocker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Theodore Wheeler's Bad Faith is an extraordinary collection. Each story is articulately rendered and full of simple wonder. Sentences are crafted with care, joining to form a sonorous selection of prose. With the exception of maybe only one title, each story is of equal caliber. Also, the way the first and last stories are connected, and each story in the collection is separated by a vignette that also fits into the larger story, keeps the reader invested in a way other collections sometimes fail to do.

If there's one complaint to be made about Bad Faith, it's the abruptness of the stories' conclusions. I'm not a reader who feels the need to wrap up a story, by any means, but even I felt that the endings could be a bit jarring. It's a small thing, but some readers will make it a big thing. If you don't mind open-ended stories, there's nothing less than stellar about this collection. Having a taste of what Wheeler is capable of, I look forward to his forthcoming novel, Kings of Broken Things, due to arrive in August.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of short stories, set in the Midwest (Nebraska, mostly), and skillfully woven together to provide a sense of narrative cohesion.

[Jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfectly and deliciously descriptive peek into the lives of many ... tying them all together in the end in a way that I didn't see coming. Can't wait for more from Mr. Wheeler. 5 stars. Easily.

[Vicky K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

lukewarm

Not really sure I followed all the different stories and how they connected throughout the book, nor did I grasp whether that was even I intended. As a result, I was left confused at the end, like something fascinating happened and I missed it. Don't think I will reread in to figure it out.