Fiction Writer
Roberta Hartling Gates is the author of Number 12 rue Sainte-Catherine, a collection of short stories forthcoming from Running Wild Press on September 9, 2024.
She was the 2021 winner of the Dogwood Literary Prize in Fiction and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, also in 2021.
She has an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is also a reader for The Examined Life Journal.
September 9, 2024 Release
DESCRIPTION
Though unexceptional in every way, Klaus Barbie, a mid-level Gestapo chief, ruled Lyon, France, like a medieval tyrant from 1942-44. Crowds parted to let him pass; a table was permanently reserved for him at Le Lapin Blanc, Lyon’s raciest nightclub; and pretty young women slipped him notes inscribed with their phone numbers.
But his glory days represented only a thin slice of his life. What prepared him for his role as the so-called Butcher of Lyon, and what became of him after the war ended? In an attempt to answer these and other questions, this collection of nine wide-ranging and skillfully written stories presents Barbie in a variety of guises, from that of a vulnerable young boy, to a preening young man on the make, to an enfeebled old man forced to confront his crimes forty years after the fact.
Though wars and their excesses flare up and die down, evil is always with us, promising a god-like dominion over others that seduces those who are weakest. This book is a reminder of that.
ADVANCE PRAISE
These eloquent and often wrenching stories closely examine the abuse of power: the psychology behind it, the damage it leaves in its wake, and the seductive way it draws others into its web. Roberta Hartling Gates has written a perceptive exploration of the human heart’s dark corners.
Connie Hampton Connally, author of The Songs We Hide and Fire Music
In her masterful debut, Roberta Hartling Gates follows a mid-level Gestapo agent from his vulnerable beginnings as a young boy to his eventual confrontation with his crimes decades later. With meticulous attention to historical detail and a profound sensitivity to human nature, each story offers a fresh episode in Barbie’s life, a new perspective on Barbie’s character, and a novel narrative experiment, delving into his romantic relationships, his encounters with Resistance leaders, and the consequences of his actions. From the violent household of his upbringing to his role in the roundup of foreign Jews, we witness the transformation of a seemingly ordinary individual into an agent of evil.
Mark Mayer, author of Aerialists
What Roberta Hartling Gates knows—and what this linked collection of stories so deftly shows us—is how one boy’s internalized suffering can come to have such a terrible impact on the displaced Jews and French Resistance members of Lyon, France. And it’s these people, rounded up by chance at Number 12 Rue Sainte-Catherine, who will stay with you. Because Gates writes about them with such precision and such rare understanding, they absolutely come alive on the page.
John Dalton, author of Heaven Lake
Roberta Hartling Gates 