American Salvage

A New York Times Notable Book

“Nuanced and smart . . . Serber knows that neglect or disconnect doesnt always turn into trauma or damage. Life isnt algebra. Which events lead to pain, and which to growth and awareness, remains unpredictable. The one reliable truth is that mistakes illuminate the most, albeit with fractured light.”

—The New York Times Book Review

Mothers and daughters ride a familial tide of joy, pride, regret, guilt, and love in these acclaimed stories of flawed, resilient women. Wheat bread and plain yogurt become weapons in a battle between a teenage daughter and her mother. An aimless college student, married to her much older professor, sneaks cigarettes while caring for their newborn son. On the eve of her husbands fiftieth birthday, a pilfered fifth of rum, rogue teenagers, and an unexpected tattoo has a woman questioning her place in her childrens lives. And we follow through two decades the family created when capricious, magnetic Ruby, an ambitious college student, becomes a single mother to cautious daughter Nora in 1970s California. Shout Her Lovely Name is a “funny, bittersweet” (Vanity Fair) book that announces the arrival of a stunning new writer.

“Powerful and disquieting . . . Serber writes with exquisite patience and sensitivity, and is an expert in the many ways that love throws people together and splits them apart, often at the same time.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“Always, Serber's writing sparkles: practical, strong, brazenly modern, marbled with superb descriptions . . . Take my word: Shout Her Lovely Name will reach inside readers and squeeze. On second thought, don't take my word. Read these lovely stories.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

www.natalieserber.com

"Campbell's an American voice — two parts healthy fear, one part awe, one part irony, one part realism." Los Angeles Times

"The effect of American Salvage is that Campbell's Michigan lingers and cannot be ignored or forgotten." Chicago Literary Scene Examiner

"Starred Review. These fine-tuned stories are shaped by stealthy wit, stunning turns of events, and breath-taking insights.... Readers...will feel salvaged and transformed by the gutsy book’s fierce compassion." Booklist

"'Beware ye who enter here,' and yet you should and must because the work is so fine and truthful and deeply human, And you will surely know yourself and your world better for having come." Small Press Review

"[A] beautifully written collection, yet a harrowing one — especially if read all at once. Page by page, Campbell portrays the thoughts of rape survivors, meth addicts, alcoholics, victims of accidents and violent crimes, each clinging to any flawed human relationship they can in small towns ravaged by economic decline." Matthew Jakubowski, Rain Taxi (Read the entire )

American Salvage is rich with local color and peopled with rural characters who love and hate extravagantly. They know how to fix cars and washing machines, how to shoot and clean game, and how to cook up methamphetamine, but they have not figured out how to prosper in the twenty-first century. Through the complex inner lives of working-class characters, Bonnie Jo Campbell illustrates the desperation of post-industrial America, where wildlife, jobs, and whole ways of life go extinct and the people have no choice but to live off what is left behind.

Finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in Fiction; finalist for the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction. 'These short stories approach their subjects from an array of perspectives, but what they share is freshness, surprise, and a compulsion to plumb some absolute extremes of American existence."National Book Award citation

The effect of American Salvage is that Campbell’s Michigan lingers and cannot be ignored or forgotten.‘Beware ye who enter here,’ and yet you should and must because the work is so fine and truthful and deeply human, And you will surely know yourself and your world better for having come.

American Salvage is rich with local color and peopled with rural characters who love and hate extravagantly. They know how to fix cars and washing machines, how to shoot and clean game, and how to cook up methamphetamine, but they have not figured out how to prosper in the twenty-first century. Through the complex inner lives of working-class characters, Bonnie Jo Campbell illustrates the desperation of post-industrial America, where wildlife, jobs, and whole ways of life go extinct and the people have no choice but to live off what is left behind.

A collection of stories about the complicated and powerful ties between mothers and daughters.

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the National Book Award finalist American Salvage, Women & Other Animals, and the novels Q Road and Once Upon a River. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, the AWP Award for Short Fiction, and Southern Review’s 2008 Eudora Welty Prize for "The Inventor, 1972." Her work has appeared in Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Ontario Review. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she studies kobudo, the art of Okinawan weapons, and hangs out with her two donkeys, Jack and Don Quixote.

Read an exclusive essay by Bonnie Jo Campbell