Synopses & Reviews
A farmer perishing under a fallen tractor makes a last stab at philosophizing: “There was nothing dead that was ever beautiful.” It is a sentiment belied not only by the strange beauty in his story but also in the rough lives and deaths, small and large, that fill these haunting tales. Pulp-fiction grim and gritty but with the rhythm and resonance of classic folklore, these stories take place in a world of shadowy figures and childhood fears, in a countryside peopled by witches and skinflints, by men and women mercilessly unforgiving of one anothers trespasses, and in nights prowled by wolves and scrutinized by an “agonized and lamenting” moon. Ervin D. Krauses characters pontificate in saloons, condemning the morals of others as they slowly get sloshed; they have affairs in old cars on winter nights; they traffic in gossip, terrorize their neighbors, steal, hunt, and spy.
This collection includes award-winning stories like “The Snake” and “The Quick and the Dead” as well as the previously unpublished “Anniversary,” which stirred a national controversy when it was censored by the University of Nebraska and barred from appearing in Prairie Schooner. Krauses portrayal of the matter-of-fact cruelty and hopeful fragility of humanity is a critical addition to the canon of twentieth-century American literature.
Review
"The 11 linked stories in Gautier's debut collection . . . vividly evoke Puerto Rico's intoxicating, comforting atmosphere—that unbreakable tether binding struggling people in crowded Northeastern U.S. cities to their tropical homeland. . . . Gautier captures the unique experience, and predicament, of Puerto Ricans living in the mainland U.S."—Publishers Weekly
Review
"Gautier's linked stories deftly capture her characters' internal struggles for identity and home."—Leah Strauss, Booklist
Review
“In these richly textured and at times heartbreaking stories, Amina Gautier forges the links between generations and across oceans. She is a builder of bridges as she strives to find that middle ground between the two islands—Manhattan and Puerto Rico—that exert their tug on her characters and shape who they are and what they become.”—Mary Morris, author of Revenge
Review
“In these moving, dramatic stories about hunger and fullness, Amina Gautier explores what it means to strive and live in the margins of American hope. Her shrewd compassion brings together characters determined to be happy and shows the cost of happiness with vivid, rich intelligence.”—Erin McGraw, author of Better Food for a Better World.
Review
“
In Reach is a
Winesburg, Ohio for the contemporary Great Plains. . . . Filled with complicated human stories, it is a joy to read and will stay with the reader for a long, long time.”—Dan OBrien, author of
A Wild Idea
Review
“Pamela Carter Joerns fictional village of Reach, Nebraska, is populated by people you have known, or known of, all your life. In these glimpses of life as it is really lived, you will encounter your aunt Ella, your grandfather Leland, even the uncle no one mentions. You may agree that God is not absent if you are there. You will never forget Marlene and Vernon. Each character is doing “the best he can do” to harvest satisfaction from their lives. Searching for connections, you will find these folks in reach of your heart.”—Linda M. Hasselstrom, author of
No Place Like Home and
Dirt Song
Review
“
In Reach is an elegant, pitch-perfect book. . . . Pamela Joern has once again demonstrated that shes the real thing, a masterful writer capable of showing us the world through the passions, disappointments, secrets, losses, and small achievements of characters whose submerged lives are played out against the harsh beauty of the Nebraska plains. I loved this book.”—Ladette Randolph, author of
Havens WakeReview
"Are thinness, youth and beauty really the ultimate values of the human race? Science fiction, allegory or parody, this tasty little novel serves up a witty parody of today's calorie-obsessed culture to sweeten its merciless, well-aimed bite."—Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle
Review
“Shua ridicules the idea of thinness as . . . an aristocratic model, as well as the institutions that promote that ideal. [
The Weight of Temptation] is a sharp, funny, acid, and entertaining novel.”—Patricio Lennard,
Radar: Página/12
Review
“Whos not afraid of those extra pounds? Who doesnt need the mirrors daily reassurance? Who doesnt fear ugliness and isolation as even more unbearable than death? In her latest novel, Ana María Shua tracks the unhappy path of the obese to those murky institutions that claim omnipotence.”—Magdalena Ruiz Guiñazu,
Perfil
Review
“Written in a rich, colloquial language stripped of euphemism, alternately raw and seductive.”—Marta Ortiz,
La CapitalReview
"[The Weight of Temptation] offers an incredible new look into the cyclic addiction to food and fans of dystopian literature, political parables, and food aficionados will find this to be a newly relevant twist on an old tale."—Three Percent
Review
"Joern's talent is in creating fully realized, interesting characters and unambiguous stories that weave together several threads."—Mary Ann Grossmann, twincities.com
Review
"With prose that vivifies the intricate patchwork of characters and captures the landscape's simplicity, Haven's Wake explores 'the various attempts to explain the unexplainable,' including family, faith, and death."—Katharine Fronk, Booklist Online
Review
"[Haven's Wake is] lyrically written and a wonderful read."—Ellen Meeropol, ellenmeeropol.com
Review
"Randolph is an excellent writer, telling the story with a frankness and humor that keeps it from sinking into melodrama."—
Publishers
WeeklyReview
“Havens Wake is about memory and silence, and about secrets and the fear of them. But above all, its a tale of love and loyalty. At the very heart of this deeply heartfelt novel is the story of the restorative power of family and tradition.”—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Coffins of Little Hope
Review
“Ladette Randolph traces that finest of lines between what counts as betrayal and what counts as fidelity in a family, what counts as love and what counts as duty over the generations, what counts as desire and what counts as necessity in a home. Havens Wake is a moving reckoning of disappointments and glories.”—William Lychack, author of The Architect of Flowers
Review
“A song of a story—uplifting, tender, heart-shattering. Ladette Randolph is a master. These characters are so real to me I feel I could drive to Nebraska and find them, easily.”—Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red
Review
"Told with respect, grit, and truth, Now We Will Be Happy is a powerful collection about family, identity, and the sacrifices we make in our pursuits of happiness."—Laura Farmer, Cedar Rapids Gazette
Review
“A cold-eyed rebuke to those who complain of the lack of inventiveness of French writers.”—Jean-Maurice de Montrémy
Review
"Vividly imagined, thought provoking and spare, this is an unusual collection . . . worth searching out."—Sandy Amazeen, Monsters and Critics
Review
“A continually changing, continually new poetic force.”—Christophe Kantcheff,
PolitisReview
“Between a fragile lyricism and an almost silent poetic expression of an absolute, inevitable devastation.”—Hugo Pradelle, La Quinzaine Littéraire
Review
"Krause's portrayal of the matter-of-fact cruelty and hopeful fragility of humanity is a critical addition to the canon of 20th-century American literature."—Nebraska Magazine
Review
“Although there is not a single ghoul or specter to be found in the fiction of Ervin Krause, these sad, troubling stories will haunt you. He anatomized every part of us: our wicked wishes, our shameful fears, and our tragic desires.”—Owen King, author of
Double Feature: A NovelReview
“Krause is a brilliant and important writer without a book. His death at an early age cut short what surely would have been an important literary career. . . .
You Will Never See Any God is both an act of rescue and a critical consideration of a body of work.”—Hilda Raz, author of
What Happens and former editor of
Prairie SchoonerReview
"Joern is a seasoned tour guide. As she tells her stories, she lets us know that she understands our broken, beautiful, humanity. For that we should give her thanks."—Aaron Klink, Collegeville Institute
Synopsis
Now We Will Be Happy is a prize-winning collection of stories about Afro-Puerto Ricans, U.S.-mainland-born Puerto Ricans, and displaced native Puerto Ricans who are living between spaces while attempting to navigate the unique culture that defines Puerto Rican identity. Amina Gautiers characters deal with the difficulties of bicultural identities in a world that wants them to choose only one.
The characters in Now We Will Be Happy are as unpredictable as they are human. A teenage boy leaves home in search of the mother he hasnt seen since childhood; a granddaughter is sent across the ocean to broker peace between her relatives; a widow seeks to die by hurricane; a married woman takes a bathtub voyage with her lover; a proprietress who is the glue that binds her neighborhood cannot hold on to her own son; a displaced wife develops a strange addiction to candles.
Crossing boundaries of comfort, culture, language, race, and tradition in unexpected ways, these characters struggle valiantly and doggedly to reconcile their fantasies of happiness with the realities of their existence.
Synopsis
In writing both rich and evocative, Pamela Carter Joern conjures the small plains town of Reach, Nebraska, where residents are stuck tight in the tension between loneliness and the risks of relationships.
With insight, wry humor, and deep compassion, Joern renders a cast of recurring characters engaged in battles public and private, epic and mundane: a husband and wife find themselves the center of a local scandal; a widow yearns for companionship, but on her own terms; a father and son struggle with their broken relationship; a man longs for escape from a communitys limited view of love; a boys misguided attempt to protect his brother results in a senseless tragedy. In the town of Reach, where there is hope and hardship, connections may happen in surprising ways or lie achingly beyond grasp.
Synopsis
Dystopian fantasy, political parable, morality tale—however one reads it, this novel is first and foremost pure Ana María Shua, a work of fiction like no other and a dark pleasure to read. Shua, an Argentinian writer widely celebrated throughout Latin America, frames her complex drama in deceptively simple, straightforward prose. The story takes place at a fat farm called The Reeds, a nightmare world that might not exist but certainly could. The last resort of the overweight wealthy (or sponsored), The Reeds subjects its “campers” to extreme measures—particularly the regimented system of public humiliation imposed by its director, a glib and sharp-minded sadist called the Professor.
Into the midst of this methodical madness comes Marina Rubin, who experiences all the excesses of The Reeds. The pervasive cruelty of this refined novel distances it from facile conclusions. Amid the mordant social satire, The Reeds obese campers are far more than merely victims of the system, subjected to impossible social demands for physical perfection. Out of control, fierce, rebellious, or subjugated, they are recognizable human beings, contending with an unjust but efficient authority in their unique and solitary ways.
Synopsis
Early July, and the corn in eastern Nebraska stands ten feet tall; after a near-decade of drought, it seems too good to be true, and everyone is watching the sky for trouble. For the Grebels, whose plots of organic crops trace a modest patchwork among the vast fields of soybeans and corn, trouble arrives from a different quarter in the form of Elsas voice on her estranged sons answering machine: “Your fathers dead. Youll probably want to come home.”
When a tractor accident fells the patriarch of this Mennonite family, the threads holding them together are suddenly drawn taut, singing with the tensions of a lifetimes worth of love and faith, betrayal and shame. Through the competing voices of those gathered for Haven Grebels funeral, acts of loyalty and failures, long-suppressed resentments and a tragic secret are brought to light, expressing a larger, complex truth.
Synopsis
From one of the most original French writers of our day comes a mysterious, prismatic, and at times profoundly sad reflection on humanity in its darker moments—one of which may very well be our own. In a collection of fictions that blur distinctions between dreaming and waking reality, Lutz Bassmann sets off a series of echoes—the “entrevoutes” that conduct us from one world to another in a journey as viscerally powerful as it is intellectually heady. While humanity seems to be fading around them, the members of a shadowy organization are doing their inadequate best to assist those experiencing their last moments. From a soldier-monk exorcising what seem to be spirits (but are they?) from an abandoned house, to a spy executing a mission whose meaning eludes him, to characters exploring cells, wandering through ruins, confronting political dissent and persecution, encountering—perhaps—the spirits once exorcised, these stories conduct us through a world at once ambiguous and sharply observed. This remarkable work, in Jordan Stumps superb translation, offers readers a thrilling entry into Bassmanns numinous world.
About the Author
Lutz Bassmann belongs to a community of imaginary authors invented, championed, and literarily realized by Antoine Volodine, a French writer of Slavic origins born in 1950. Volodines many celebrated, category-defying works include the award-winning Minor Angels (Nebraska, 2004), which blends science fiction, Tibetan myth, a ludic approach to writing, and a profound humanistic idealism. Jordan Stump is a professor of French at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of The Other Book (Nebraska, 2011), has translated numerous texts, including Minor Angels, and was awarded the French-American Foundations translation prize and the Prix Médicis in 2014.