Reviewed by: Any Other Place: Stories by Michael Croley Emily Masters (bio) Michael Croley. Any Other Place: Stories. Durham, N.C.: Blair, 2019. 240 pages. Softcover. $16.95. In his debut short story collection Any Other Place, Kentucky native Michael Croley takes readers right into the heart of a diverse Appalachia. These stories, as well as his other work that has appeared in publications including Narrative, Catapult, Blackbird, and Paris Review Daily, are often filled with characters who take on a global perspective from within the Appalachian region. Many of the stories in Any Other Place center on staying versus leaving, on trying to find one's fit in a world where categories are often limiting and ostracizing to those who do not fit neatly into a binary categorization of identity. Croley's characters are Korean, are Kentuckian, or fall somewhere in [End Page 115] between. "Slope," the opening story of the collection, examines a narrator who grew up in eastern Kentucky with an American father and Korean mother. When he lives in Kentucky, the narrator finds himself confronted with racist comments due to his different appearance, but living in New York, he finds he is more outcast for the lilt of his Appalachian accent. He loves the mountains but is not sure there will be anything to bring him back once his parents are gone, not sure he can overcome the memories of outsiderness in the place he loves. Characters in other stories share the same questioning of whether to leave or to stay. In "Two Strangers," the narrator comes home to take care of his best friend's daughter after his unexpected death, but part of him is angry at being forced to return to the place he left, to leave the place where he has constructed a new life. In "Smolders," the narrator finally hooks up with the girl he has loved throughout high school but must face the fact that he is leaving to attend Harvard and will perhaps never see her again. Both characters grapple with the tension between home and separation, between responsibility and desire. Croley also writes about abuse and the way love complicates destructive behavior between abuser and victim. In "Diamond Dust," one of the little league baseball players suffers the wrath of his abusive father after making only the most minor mistakes on the field. In "Siler, Kentucky, 1970," Riley Lawson has been abusing his wife, Della, for years. She always finds herself running back to him because she loves him so dearly until her father puts an end to it, shooting Riley when he pushes his abusive behavior too far. Croley tackles the subject of abuse, often a taboo topic in Appalachia where keeping one's nose out of other people's business is a social more, in a complex way, illustrating how abusive relationships are shrouded in a cloak of guilt, questioning, love, and fear. [End Page 116] Croley doesn't shy away from talking about other touchy political issues such as environmental destruction due to energy extraction, either. "Solid Ground" examines how lives are disrupted by fracking when sinkholes are created, one of which swallows a woman and her car whole. The narrator in "Washed Away" has immigrated from Korea and moved in with her husband and his parents when a sludge dam breaks, filling in their valley and covering their home and all their worldly possessions. These stories of environmental catastrophe are all too familiar in the Appalachian region where damaging extractive industries have sunk in their teeth. The closing story "Satellites," however, is an outlier in the collection, a bizarre tale that does not seem to mesh with the other stories. While well-written and enjoyable, it seems a bit fantastical. A hairdresser finds out that an older hermit who lives up in the hills has unleashed wild exotic animals including lions, from their cages near her farm. The most real part of the story is the relationship that emerges with her father, saving the story from total disconnect from the rest of the collection. Still, Any Other Place is a collection in which readers will want to invest. Croley's writing about Korean Appalachian characters...