by Brian Oaster • May 5, 2021 at 10:01 am images courtesy of Keith Rosson.
God sends the four horsemen of the Apocalypse on a team building retreat aboard a cruise. An ex-Nazi works as the muscle for a revivalist cult on the road. A chain smoking tooth fairy wonders what to do when she witnesses child abuse. These quandaries propel the pages of Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons, the recently published first short story collection by Portland novelist Keith Rosson. Equal parts haunted, hilarious, and deeply human, Rosson’s stories straddle genres while maintaining a distinctive, jagged voice. That’s apparent in this excerpt from the story “Their Souls Climb the Room”: