PORT ANGELES — Author and Peninsula College professor Michael Calvin Mills sheds light on unsettling, brilliant and dreamlike worlds in his new collection of short stories, “The Caged Man.”
“The collection dances a fine line between realistic literary fiction and surrealism or even genre fiction,” said Mills, who goes by Calvin Mills in his writing.
Mills’ study of magical realism took place as he traveled in South America, Central America and Caribbean countries. Later, he came to realize he was inspired by the strangeness found in many classic literary works, including Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”
“The Caged Man,” released in mid-December, is being published by the University of Wisconsin’s Cornerstone Press as a part of The Legacy Series .
The book can be purchased on Cornerstone Press’ website, on Amazon, on Walmart’s website or on Barnes and Noble’s website.
When Mills first began reading seriously, he noted the many locations found in the works of Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac.
The majority of the book’s 13 stories take place in Spanish-speaking countries, where Mills has traveled extensively.
“Going to another place, all the small things matter and you notice all the small things,” he said. “Including, like, you go from house to house and hotel to hotel, and you always smell the same lemon-scented soap that almost everybody uses in whatever country. Then you go to the grocery store and you realize why, because the grocery store is not like Walmart, with thousands of choices of soap. There’s like two or three choices of soap.”
The book’s opening story, “The Borrowed Dress,” is set in Escazú, Costa Rica. It is loosely based on a true story, Mills said.
In the story, the reader occupies the perspective of a 17-year-old Costa Rican girl who is dating a much older foreign man.
The story’s opening scene finds her at an expensive compound, which she recalls passing many times. Among her memories are those of riding on the backs of a local boys motorbike’s and holding on tightly as they sped daringly through the streets.
She remembers their smell as being the smell of Costa Rica. Some of them were beautiful.
She notes that those boys were never eligible for her to end up with. They could not meet the wants and needs of life.
Instead, she opts to date an old, white foreign man, risking being strung along by him saying that he will leave his “bad marriage” and bring her to his country. She does so in the hopes that it will mean protecting her sister.
The girl calls the man her Cebolla, or onion, in Spanish. While the man only sometimes smells like an onion, he smells foreign.
“We call all the old white men who come here looking for young girls Cebollas, because, although they are round and white and bald on top, they have green tails,” Mills wrote in the story. “The wallets in their back pockets are full of green.”
The story unfolds through a series of visually rich scenes that take place over less than a week and ultimately leaves the reader with a surprising turn.
When in Costa Rica, Mills met a Canadian woman who said she worked with local girls who experienced or faced sex trafficking. Also on that trip, he learned the term “Cebolla.”
Many of the stories in the collection capture characters who take actions commonly judged as strange or wrong. In Mills’ stories, those characters can be seen sympathetically or even celebrated for their actions.
In “The Affable Corpse,” set outside of Bogotá, Colombia, a woman develops romantic feelings for a miraculously slowly decomposing corpse.
The corpse has a warm grin permanently affixed to his face and gives visitors a sense of peace when they sit beside him. Deemed to be an instrument of salvation, inspiration and faith, the local church renovated a small house where he could be viewed.
The story was the original title for the collection, which Mills started shopping around 2016, before realizing the title was not a selling point among publishers.
In “Such Little Weights,” a window washer observes his son playing accordion for tourists in Lisbon, Portugal.
While passing tourists’ attention spans are inscrutable to the narrator, his son’s show draws them in, owing to Jacinta, an aging chihuahua who holds a cup for tip money in her mouth.
The story, like many in Mills’ collection, reveals mundane yet personal and tragic details about the dynamics at play under the surface of the scene.
In fewer than three pages, Mills manages to animate the small scene as genuinely cute, sun-washed and whimsical, while also making room for weightier realities at play.
Mills observed the exact scene while walking the streets of Lisbon. He took a photo, he said.
Mills said some of the stories were written as long as 20 years ago. From 2005 to 2015, Mills said he was getting his stories, including some from “The Caged Man,” published as much as possible. In 2016, he started shopping the book’s manuscript, entering it into competitions.
“It ended up being a finalist in two or three contests and a runner-up in one,” Mills said. “It was this close from being a book prize and actually getting published and getting paid for it and all of that stuff.”
Rather than feeling discouraged by the near wins, Mills was encouraged.
“If it was that close amongst all the competition, it must be OK. I shouldn’t just let it die,” Mills said.
After having a child in 2018, Mills put the book on the backburner for years. In 2023, he was reignited by interviewing authors on his Raymond Carver Podcast and began submitting his with a deepened commitment.
Having a publisher stand behind his work and seeing his first book come out feels very good, Mills said.
“It’s sort of a vindication for a lifestyle,” he continued. “After spending 20 years thinking of myself as a writer but never calling myself an author, it’s a nice turning point to have a first book accepted by a publisher that’s willing to go through the time and expense and energy to publish and promote a book for you.”
Mills said he expects to schedule a reading locally in 2026, likely a Studium Generale at the college, but those details are yet to be settled.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.
