Thomas McGuane’s ‘ranchy world’ explored in ‘A Wooded Shore’ short stories

BY ANNA RIDILLA
FROM GASPARILLA ISLAND MAGAZINE

A Wooded Shore by Thomas McGuane is a collection of nine short stories about men in rural America, who are either ideologically or literally adrift. Each story explores a main character, often surrounded by a tableau of odd characters in different outskirts of the country. McGuane writes brief yet poignant glimpses into these characters’ lives and interpersonal relationships. 

Told with frankness and humor, these short stories hold readers’ attention until the last anecdote. Each main character is a young to middle-aged man who is in some way troubled by his life choices or direction. All nine stories are crafted to draw readers fully into each distinct world before seamlessly shifting to a completely new narrative. McGuane’s works of prose are unsentimental, favoring dry minimalism. 

“I’ve written for the New Yorker for a long time now, so I’m not sure whether or not their preferred length has sunk into me,” McGuane said of writing short stories. “It seems to me that my stories always kind of fall into that, with the exception of the title story of this book.”

In the first story, “A Wide Spot,” a cynical politician narrates a reunion that leads to an inappropriate seduction attempt. The story explores themes of moral compromise and the complexities of relationships. Another story follows a physician as he reflects on a past affair with a dying patient and the surprising retribution he faces for it. “Thataway” is about a chain-store furniture magnate who returns home for the funeral of an estranged sister. “Take Half Leave Half” directly borrows from the surroundings of McGuane’s Montana home. It follows two childhood friends who take ranch jobs and meet a tragic end. 

“I’ve been in this kind of ranchy world for so long, and I’ve seen a lot of kids that came in to be cowboys and seen how some of those lives worked out,” McGuane said. “You know, kind of a concentrated form of idealism that often went kind of haywire because they grew up and got old. So, I think maybe that story is one of my favorites, because I knew the kinds of kids that it was based on, and I was one of those kids at one point.”

Though the collection contains nine distinct stories, each is built on a foundation of discontent. In different ways, McGuane examines how every character grapples with dissatisfaction in their reality, revealing how personal ambitions and dreams ultimately measure against the circumstances of their lives. 

“I would not, in any sense, call them linked stories,” he said, “but a lot of it just sunk in over time, because I’ve lived here in Montana for almost 60 years, so it was kind of my zone of reference when I write. But that’s not the case in the title story.”

The last and titular story, “A Wooded Shore,” is the longest and also perhaps the darkest of the nine. It begins with a river trip fraught with tension that reveals the dysfunction of a family. The story follows the collapse of a family, highlighting themes of familial dynamics and disintegration.

“Some of the inspiration for that story came from my own family life,” McGuane said. “And I, you know, come from a sort of troubled family and a lot of those things I had much more to talk about, and yet, this is not really a memoir. In other words, in some ways it’s not particularly accurate, but I wanted to look into the feelings in some ways I’d avoided for a long time when I wrote the story. So that became important to me in a way that was new, I guess, so I made that the title story.”

More of novella than a short story, “A Wooded Shore” is unsurprisingly McGuane’s favorite of the nine. “I was sound asleep, and my wife was reading the title story in another room, and she came over and woke me up and said, ‘That’s the best thing you’ve ever written,’” he said. “Now, I don’t know if that’s just her taste, you know, but I do think it’s kind of right up there.”

Across the whole collection, the passage of time, indeed impermanence as a constant itself, is a theme that touches each character. The fragility of institutional structures, whether that be marriages, family dynamics, jobs or the status quo in general, comes up over and over again; however, McGuane’s stark humor in approaching these subjects prevents the storylines from delving too deeply into despair. 

Though Montana is now home for McGuane, he briefly lived in Florida, even visiting Gasparilla Island to fish on occasion. “I caught my first tarpon in Boca Grande in 1951,” he said. “I think I was going there before there was a bridge and all sorts of stuff, but it always struck me as a kind of paradise.”

McGuane spoke with a sense of nostalgia about the old Boca Grande, echoing the tone of wistful reflection that runs throughout this collection of short stories.

“Everybody has to absorb change, no matter where they live,” he said. “When you get to be my age, it seems like you’ve seen a lot of it.”

Penguin Random House, 2025, $27