Dr. Sam

Eugene Field, the poet who gave America 'Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,' also wrote stories of considerably darker hue. This collection centers on Dr. Sam, a figure whose gentle bedside manner masks something far more complicated. Field's prose carries the same musical rhythm that distinguishes his verse, but the stories here venture into stranger territory: small-town America with its hidden cruelties, its quiet desperation, its bargains made in desperation. There are ghosts here, and devils, and the particular loneliness of frontier life. Yet Field cannot entirely abandon tenderness, even in his darkest tales. The result is an odd, unsettling collection that reveals the unexpected depths beneath the author of nursery rhymes America still teaches its children.