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In these carved and crafted out of hardscrabble poems, Jeff Vande Zande makes seamless the natural world and the worlds constructed by the human. He is our Virgil leading us through the daily grinding down of our hearts, through the realization that the violence and splendor of the outside world has its inner equivalent. --Jack Ridl
234 pages, Midwest set novel, 6 x 9 perfect bound
Fiction. "This coming-of-age tale centers on a young poet, who is ill-prepared for and frustrated by the hometown he returns to, where he fights with his father and with himself. Set against the backdrop of a broken city and a failed relationship, the novel champions poetry and the underdog--whether it be our seemingly-incompetent narrator, a baseball team, or a failing non-profit. With AMERICAN POET, Jeff Vande Zande has written a love poem for the city of Saginaw, and, by extension, a love poem for Flint, Gary, Cleveland, or any forgotten city in the Rust Belt."--Gina Myers
The memoir of Marina von Neumann Whitman
Fiction. John Eliason is a young Mormon missionary from Alberta about to return home after two years in Sweden. When his only convert dies, John's last duty is to visit the estranged family to make funeral arrangements. As the snow strands him in the countryside, tensions rise and family secrets are uncovered. The story unfolds through letters, journal entries, flashbacks, and fragmented ruminations. It is a love note to people outside of their cultural comfort zones, to failed poets, and to silence.
Jeff Vande Zande's latest story collection travels down the shady lanes of the American neighborhood. From kids egging windows to lost joggers and insomniacs to basement prisoners and Orwellian gated communities, these stories grow ever more surreal, holding a darkened mirror up to that which we are-and may become.
You know Backstop. He plays for any team in any city in America with a major league ball club. You cheer him when he delivers, and boo him when he doesn't. In what could be his last game after 14 years in the major leagues-the seventh game of the World Series-Backstop chronicles his rookie season, takes the reader to Chicago where he finds romance, and reveals the heartbreak he endured in the aftermath of an adulterous affair. Fellow Michigan writer and author of Landscape with Fragmented Figures Jeff Vande Zande writes of Backstop: "J. Conrad Guest offers an entertaining and instructive journey into both major league baseball and major league matters of the heart." While Rachael Perry, also a Michigan writer, says, "Baseball, like love, is a game of errors and regrets. Pop-outs, ground-outs, strike-outs. A bad swing, a bad throw, a bad hop. But what captivates us most is the possibility of the next at-bat, of the chance for a rally, of an unlikely clutch play that suddenly changes the stakes. This is where J. Conrad Guest meets us in Backstop: in this beautiful, hopeful place closest to our hearts, where we play for the love of the game, and we love with everything we have."
A collection of fly-fishing essays reflect the author's visits to regions ranging from the Smokies to the Canadian Maritimes, where he explored such interests as fishing etiquette, mosquitoes, and the charms of third-rate streams.
Fiction. A man wakes up one morning believing he has a wife who lives in Tucumcari, New Mexico. A wife he somehow remembers yet does not know. When he decides to find her, he embarks on a surreal journey through both landscape and memory. The reader travels with the narrator through sinking cities, his father's various jobs, government-designated atomic safe havens, motel rooms, cities made of only men, and interactions with people from his childhood including Boyd Delmarco, a famous radio personality whose lungs have turned to glass. "Parks' debut novel is a kaleidoscope of deep-rooted imagery, infused with magic realism yet tempered by the groundedness that comes with instinctive storytell...
Appalachia Now hops on the back of a motorcycle for a wild ride through the hills we know best�Vicco, Hazard, branches, mine access roads. Fiddle tunes and black lung and the photoelectric gleam of stars. But these haunting stories take us way beyond the familiar. They are as skillfully wrought with the visible world as they are with the luminous being in the hollow of a cupped hand. I couldn�t put this book down and when I did, my heart ached to step back inside the pages. Karen McElmurray