A Korean woman in rural Kentucky clings to the love found in her new marriage as the mountain above her washes away.
A dutiful daughter struggles to help her father navigate their shared grief—and the sudden release of dangerous, exotic animals.
A new father driven by his pride confronts Japanese soldiers in a harrowing raid on his home.
In his debut collection, Michael Croley takes us from the Appalachian regions of rural Kentucky and Ohio to a village in South Korea in thirteen engaging stories in which characters find themselves, wherever they are, in states of displacement. In these settings, Croley guides his characters to some semblance of home, where they circle each other's pain, struggle to find belonging, and make sense of the mistakes and bad breaks that have brought them there. Croley uses his absorbing prose to uncover his characters' hidden disquiet and to bring us a remarkable and unique collection that expands the scope of modern American literature.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 23, 2019 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781949467017
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781949467017
- File size: 4481 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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March 25, 2019
Croley’s solid debut, set mostly in small-town Appalachia, explores masculinity, heartbreak, and isolation in 13 emotional stories. J.D. abandons his medical residency to return to his hometown of Fordyce, Ky. (the fictional setting for most of the stories), to raise the adolescent daughter of his unexpectedly dead best friend in “Two Strangers.” In “The Beginnings of a Storm,” James struggles to accept separation from his wife and regularly hires Jenna, a prostitute, as a way to avoid dealing with his feelings. Half-Korean Wren Asher is torn between leaving Fordyce for Harvard and his powerful unrequited crush on Lucinda after they have sex during a graduation bonfire in “Smolders.” In “The World’s Fair,” Maggie’s begrudging trip to the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tenn., incites panic when her 12-year-old son goes missing in a crowd. The narrator of the wrenching “Diamond Dust” ignores the abuse of his baseball teammate Eddie Jackson by Eddie’s exacting father from Little League into high school. In “Larger than the Sea,” the only story set outside the South, Paek Hyo, a Korean man, tries to escape forced conscription into the WWII Japanese army with devastating consequences for his wife. Readers will relish these melancholy stories of everyday and exceptional tragedies.
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