PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: February 9, 1998
Each of the 18 stories in this strong collection by Hyde (Funerals for Horses) holds a dangerous emotional temptation for its protagonist. Often, they arrive in strange towns out West fresh from funerals or breakups, eager to avoid another broken heart. In the first story, a woman discovers that her married lover has suddenly died and left her to care for his emotionally needy and very dangerous dog. Trying to kick her addiction to both Valium and sex, the protagonist of another story finds, albeit fleetingly, a "guardian angel" who will actually be faithful to his wife rather than sleep with her. "I'm always fighting motion sickness," she remarks, as could any of Hyde's desert drifters and recovering souls. These roughed-up characters put us in mind of Raymond Carver's, while the smell of hungry desperation that seeps through the work recalls the stories of Joyce Carol Oates. Indeed, Hyde does not seem yet to have hit on a voice entirely her own, save when she uses irony for humorous effect, as in the story "Mrs. Mulvaney, the Grasshopper God," in which the narrator wonders whether insects react to the cutting of her grass as humans do after war: "Stand among the corpses and the rubble asking, 'Why, god? Why?'" Hyde's ability to fix our attention fully to each piece bodes well for future work.

San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune: April 3, 1998
Catherine Ryan Hyde writes with refreshing precision. She captures a scene or a character with the barest of flourishes, revealing as much with what she doesn't say as with what she does. Every word counts.

"Earthquake Weather" is a new collection of short fiction from the Cambria-based author. Of the 18 pieces collected here, all but one have been previously published in literary reviews and journals. And all are worth reading.

The best of the bunch is "Red Texas Sky," which was nominated for Best American Short Stories, the O'Henry Awards and the Pushcart Prize. What's remarkable in this story (and in others) is Hyde's ability to create characters--in this case a scarred veteran of the Vietnam war and a young boy haunted by his own nightmares. Working mostly with dialogue, the author gives us two fully formed people, two entirely different people the reader can't help but empathize with.

Empathy is everywhere in this book. Hyde's characters often live on the periphery of madness or addiction, just one push away from making the big mistake. And yet you can't help but find at least a part of yourself in them. She's dealing with your fears, your insecurities, your madness--fears and insecurities and madness you hadn't even recognized.

Odds are you're not a pyromaniac or a nymphomaniac. Maybe you're an alcoholic, maybe you've been abused. Maybe you're dating a married man, whether you know it or not. It doesn't really matter. The point is how easily these things sneak up on you, how they happen to perfectly admirable people. The point is how you cope.

Charlie, the young boy in "Red Texas Sky," witnessed the tractor accident that killed his father. Ted, the veteran, suffers with memories of the war and of the night he killed a woman when he drove after drinking.

Ted helps Charlie to face his fears, but at the same time he's reaching for an absolution of his own, using his own nightmares to break the chain for someone else.

"So what the hell you think brave is, boy? Huh? You think it's when you're not scared? Well, I got news for you. When you're the most scared ever, and you get through, wet pants and all, then that's the bravest you ever been."

The characters in this collection are often scared, often scared of themselves. And the decision between going it alone or accepting someone's help is equally frightening, if they even have the opportunity to make the choice. Sometimes they get lucky; sometimes not.

Sometimes it's enough just to make it through the day.

Listen to the narrator of "Sam Will Remind Me": "There's a thin line between us, and it's all we have. ...My life moves too fast--I'm always fighting motion sickness."

And in "Torch": "Sometimes it becomes painfully clear that there's nothing you can do, so you do nothing."

And in "Diogenes Jones": Martin, no stranger to the AA program, had once taught her the difference between normies and the diseased. 'If a normie gets a flat tire, he calls Triple A. One of us gets a flat tire, we call suicide prevention. You may not have the alcohol thing, Rosie, but in your heart you're one of us.'"

And perhaps that's what's so striking about this collection: In your heart, you can see yourself in most every character. Sometimes that's frightening, and sometimes it's kind of nice.

Either way it's a good read.
- Michael Ray

NEW TIMES: April 30, 1998
Cambria author Catherine Ryan Hyde's first published collection of short stories, "Earthquake Weather," is a kaleidoscopic treasure.

Look through each piece of glass in a kaleidoscope and you see the world differently--a uniquely colored and shaped vision. Yet each piece is part of the big picture: a world of many shapes and types of glass--or people--whose very individuality makes us interested in them and how they fit in the world, even if it seems they could never be a part of ours beyond the fiction that brings them to life.

Ryan Hyde is a master of characterization, of emotion and dialogue. Her writing brings us into the lives of such varied people, from a self-mutilating psychotic obsessed with fire to a young gay man having an affair with a bisexual married man. Many are on the fringe of what most see as regular society, the mainstream, and yet they seem so real, so truthful. We see what makes each of them tick through Ryan Hyde's words, and she makes us understand and even care for them as only a talented wordsmith could.

Indeed there are so many emotions in these stories, such depth to the feelings, whether it's a new-found respect for insects, a strange connection to a dog that at once scares and protects you, or the deepest love for a baby not officially yours but to whom you feel attached just the same.

"What inspires me is the emotionally complex nature of the world I see all around me," says Ryan Hyde. "Emotional ambiguity, the difficulty of communication in relationships. Emotionally dicey situations. Moral dillemas and ethical crossroads. To me, this is the stuff of which fiction is made."

Her versatility of viewpoints is amazing. How is she able to get into so many different kinds of people's heads and hearts? How can she present so many viewpoints with apparent accuracy?

Maybe it's because she finds the core emotions that tie all personalities together and that many of us have on some level or another. Loneliness, sadness, the need to be loved and to love.

So many of her characters fit into that category, easily bringing that truth across. As one character puts it in a particularly tough situation: "I don't know what I feel. Maybe I feel too many emotions, all lined up like planes on a runway, and nothing can get through."

These feelings are universal, no matter what our backgrounds.
- Joan McCray Tucker

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS: May 31, 1998
In the the title story of Earthquake Weather, a strong, finely-wrought collection from Catherine Ryan Hyde, things are hot:

Earthquake Weather, they call it in L.A., where she's glad she's not. Heavy and muggy. Even in this early morning it hangs beneath the air, not heat exactly, but the promise or threat of it.

The threat becomes reality when Angie receives a letter from her husband saying he won't be joining her and their daughter in their new home, a ranch in a small, western community. He wants a divorce. The story explores what happens to a woman already on shaky ground when the earth moves.

Many of Hyde's stories deal with temptation and redemption in the setting of rough, western towns. My favorite is a road trip through a barren exterior landscape and the rich interior life of two unlikely travel partners. Charlie is a young boy who is having terrible nightmares after witnessing his father's death. Ted, the mother's new boyfriend, is an ex-con who takes it upon himself to rid the boy of his fears. Of course, Ted has ghosts of his own. The characters are well-drawn without falling into western stereotypes; the dialogue is right on target.

Charlie watches Ted light up a cigarette and asks when he'll be old enough to smoke.

"Son," he said, "don't you never take up this nasty habit. Gets you by the short hairs and then you can't quit. Cuts your wind, cuts your life, and you can't do a damn thing about it."

"But you smoke."

"You're missin' the point, kid. I do lots of things, and that don't make 'em good things to do."
- Jill Wolfson