It s been a year since the body of seventeen-year-old Kelsey Little was found in the river outside Dark Vespers, Nebraska. Although the town may have reached an uneasy equilibrium, those who loved her most have certainly not: Javier Martinez, her troubled ex-boyfriend and the father of the child no one knew she was carrying; Sam and Hank, her parents, whose marriage is coming apart under the pressure of grief and not-knowing; and Ike Parrish, a reclusive eccentric whose clairvoyant river spells compel him to come forward with information about Kelsey s disappearance and death.
A...
It s been a year since the body of seventeen-year-old Kelsey Little was found in the river outside Dark Vespers, Nebraska. Although the town may ha...
In one hand, Jesse Breedlove holds a bottle of Cuervo Gold or what s left of it in the other, the shovel with which he has just unearthed the bones of a small girl buried in the cellar of a Catholic church in Omaha, Nebraska. So begins Breedlove s odyssey across the literal and mythical landscapes of America, bearing the finely articulated body he has uncovered, bones that would neither rest nor, in their restless eloquence, let him remain silent. Through the heart of the United States, this mover of bones encounters people who live on the geographical and emotional margins and who find...
In one hand, Jesse Breedlove holds a bottle of Cuervo Gold or what s left of it in the other, the shovel with which he has just unearthed the bones...
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 Elsa s voice on her estranged son s answering machine: Your father s dead. You ll 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,...
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 wa...
"This is God," the novel begins, and we are spinning on our way into the heart of a Midwest that spans spirits and centuries and forever redefines the middle of nowhere.
Whispers plague a desperate conquistador lost in tall prairie grass. Four hundred years later, a male go-go dancer flings a bag of dope into the same field. God, in the person of a perm-giving, sheetcake-baking Nebraska farm woman, casts a jaundiced yet merciful eye over the unfolding chaos. Fire and a pair of judiciously applied pantyhose bring the two stories together. A contemplation of divinity and drugs on the...
"This is God," the novel begins, and we are spinning on our way into the heart of a Midwest that spans spirits and centuries and forever redefines ...
It s not going to kill you, a mother tells her protesting child. And maybe it won t, but that doesn t mean anyone is getting off scot-free. A no-man's-land between exoneration and repercussion, this is the place where the people in Erin Flanagan s stories live: in events as big as 9/11 and as small as an infatuation with a dog groomer, as meaningful as the birth of a baby and as senseless as a car crash, as unique as a 1980s air band living out dreams for a city in decline and as common as an afterschool job that sucks. These stories accept that we all make mistakes, butit swhat we do in...
It s not going to kill you, a mother tells her protesting child. And maybe it won t, but that doesn t mean anyone is getting off scot-free. A no-m...
Although the characters in these stories may be the usual suspects, making the usual mistakes, their stories are anything but the usual fare. Populated by pretenders, ex-cons, and wannabes who bend the rules, break the law, and risk everything to salvage their own hearts, the twelve stories in The Usual Mistakes conduct readers into a world where betrayal is just a beginning. Deception, infidelity, even death where a person goes from there is the mainspring of Erin Flanagan s fiction, and in the turns her characters take, we find rare insights: that we are often wedded to one...
Although the characters in these stories may be the usual suspects, making the usual mistakes, their stories are anything but the usual fare. Popul...
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 community s limited view of love;...
In writing both rich and evocative, Pamela Carter Joern conjures the small plains town of Reach, Nebraska, where residents are stuck tight in the tens...
Irene gives the wealthy businessmen what they want, diving headfirst into the filthy river, thinking only of providing for her baby daughter, Marisa, as the men salivate over her soaked body emerging onto the bank. A young boy tries to befriend the reticent younger sister of the town s cruelest bully, only to discover the family betrayal behind her quiet countenance. Josefa, a young bride, is executed for murdering the man who raped her. Joy Castro s How Winter Began traces these and other characters as they seek compassion from each other and themselves.
Thematically linked...
Irene gives the wealthy businessmen what they want, diving headfirst into the filthy river, thinking only of providing for her baby daughter, Maris...
The small plains town of Ingleside, Nebraska, is populated by down-on-their-luck ranchers and new money, ghosts and seers, drugs and greed, the haves and the have-nots. Lives ripple through each other to surprising effect, though the connections fluctuate between divisive gulfs and the most intimate closeness. At the center of this novel is the story of Teensy and his daughter, Luann, who face the loss of their land even as they mourn the death of Luann's mother. On the other end of the spectrum, some townspeople find enormous wealth when developers begin buying up acreages. When Glory...
The small plains town of Ingleside, Nebraska, is populated by down-on-their-luck ranchers and new money, ghosts and seers, drugs and greed, the haves ...
Music, whether a Debussy etude or Gram Parson's "Hickory Wind", has been a constant in Ruby Gervais's life. After Ruby helps fuel a paranoid fervor that spreads like wildfire throughout her rural Montana community, her home life deteriorates. Throughout, Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin is underscored by the music that forms inextricable bonds between fascinating characters.
Music, whether a Debussy etude or Gram Parson's "Hickory Wind", has been a constant in Ruby Gervais's life. After Ruby helps fuel a paranoid fervor th...
