Michael Cooney

The Immortal Woman of Asteronga & other stories Michael Cooney

This is the second collection of stories by Michael Cooney set in a mythical town inspired by the history and people of the factory towns that flourished in the Mohawk Valley. An earlier set of stories, entitled Asteronga, New York, appeared in 2013 and focused on a boy growing to adulthood in the early 1960s. This collection draws on a wider range of history and legend. The founding family of Mormonism is at the center of "When the Saints Came to Town," as it is in the author's "True Story of Joseph Smith." "Roxalana" is another version of "Roxy Druse & the Murders of Herkimer County." The 1912 strike described in "Factory Girl" will be familiar to readers of "The Red Nurse." Other figures from Valley history appear in "Colored Murderer," "Bad Water" and "When the Colonel Takes Command." "Pursuit of Happiness" is a happier version of the 1914 schoolteacher murder in Poland, NY. "Sister Margaret Mary" is a tribute to the buried lives of the creative and often desperate women who served as teaching nuns in an earlier era. "Displaced Person" is the story of a refugee from the horrors of wartime Europe while "Battle at Indian Cave" tells of a gang of immigrant children in 1918. The impact of McCarthyism is seen in "the Marxist of the Mohawk" and a dark side of 1960s success is at the heart of The Dead Boy's Suit." "Check It 99" traces the life of a man who retreats to Asteronga from the violence of 1970s New York City. Even the immortal woman from which the collection takes its name is based on an actual, seemingly ageless woman who held court on Mary Street in Little Falls long ago.