Divine intervention is hardly a blessing for Lilah and Sam in Amanda Leduc’s The Miracles of Ordinary Men, and a belief in uplifting, heavenly intercessions is but one of the expectations that Leduc bucks in this ambitious novel. Questioning our wants is not simply a thematic concern in the novel, but one that manifests itself…

Gabe Durham’s Fun Camp tours readers through the confusion and passion of youth over the course of one week spent at a summer camp dedicated to encouraging its visitors to become new fun creatures free from the bonds of who they were before. Bad behavior is valued in the proper context set down by the camp, although…

Given that the story is named after and relies on the features of something that seems like a myth, a soldier bear named Wojtek, Bernie Hafeli’s Bear Season is bound to be gloriously odd. Part of its oddity comes from a difficulty to situate the story; Bear Season happens at the boundaries between Poland and…

Jonathan Callahan’s The Consummation of Dirk is aptly described as innovative fiction, as it puts on display the author’s virtuoso abilities as both a prose stylist and structural experimentalist. These twelve fictions demonstrate Callahan’s impressive critical intelligence because they show how ultimately all worthy writing is aware of its context, engaging with influences rather than…

Any writer who becomes interested in America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the political and psychological complexities of a post 9/11 world, is taking on an important creative challenge. The range—the breadth and depth of concerns that she must know intimately—is daunting. Consider the multiple perspectives at play. The question of agency, of…

The narrators and characters found within Curtis Smith’s Beasts & Men are equal parts desperate and muted, all sharing the same quiet, worn-out acceptance of what life is for them, and what it is likely to be. It’s through this common thread of disenfranchisement that Smith builds his newest collection of short stories. Whether looking…

She had this crusty, warm light buzzing around her, insistently telling her what it felt like to be all by your little old lonesome so damn assuming self. This is how author Sarah Gerkensmeyer describes the lonely woman who becomes the third wife of a godless polygamist in the story “Careless Daughters,” but really, it…

Entertaining Strangers opens with a brief Prelude describing a fire which happened seventy-five years before. Both the Prelude, and the novel itself which is set in 1997, are narrated by Jules, who in 1997 seems to be a relatively young woman. So far, so confusing… In the first chapter, Jules sits down for a minute,…

American literature has a tradition of generation novels which stamp what it is like to live in a specific moment in the long continuum of human history. F. Scott Fitzgerald attempted to capture the jazz age with novels such as The Great Gatsby, and Hemingway wrote about the post-World War I ‘Lost Generation’ much as…

English and Creative Writing teacher Kathryn Dow’s first novel The Great Disappointment is, in fact, no disappointment whatsoever. More magic than magic realism, this is a novel of teenage angst and resiliency, a runaway tale, a novel within a novel, and a clear and poignant peek into the world of a Midwestern college English program…

One of the greatest pleasures in the life of a reader is discovering a new artist, one who views life in ways both unique and recognizable. The twenty-three pieces that make up Scott Garson’s new collection are, as individual stories, lovely, but as a whole, they achieve a type of harmony, a song full of…

To choose pieces to include in a short story collection is a challenging task, one that needs a writer with a keen eye for finding common themes without choosing what is essentially the same story, and a keen ear that can hear the rhythm of the sentences and style. In the small press world where…