Review: LONESOME LIES BEFORE US by Don Lee
Don Lee’s latest novel proves to be a deceptively nuanced tale about the disconnect between our dreams and the limits of how far we’ll go to obtain them.
Fiction
Review: DEAR CYBORGS by Eugene Lim
For Frank Exit, a man tasked with recovering the kidnapped children of a Japanese diplomat, gone are the days of a simple ransom request for money or a getaway vehicle.
Four Summer Books That Redefine the Beach Read
Who says a good beach read can’t also be a book that packs some punch? Here are four of this summer’s best.
Review: LIVING IN THE WEATHER OF THE WORLD by Richard Bausch
While not all of the fourteen stories in his new collection are a fair illustration of his ability, the balance demonstrates, once again, why he deserves a lasting place among American literary masters.
ERNESTO by Umberto Saba
Umberto Saba died four years after writing Ernesto (1953), and it went unpublished until 1975 when its content would have been far less radical than in 1953.
Review: THE GYPSY MOTH SUMMER by Julia Fierro
There are many hard edges here—a pervading sense of doom hovers throughout—but my favorite moments are when we get to see the softer, more interior side of these characters.
Review: THE WIDOW’S GUIDE TO EDIBLE MUSHROOMS by Chauna Craig
Most of the stories in The Widow’s Guide to Edible Mushrooms, Chauna Craig’s debut collection, are set in the American West, centered on characters who often identify closely with their geography … And while Craig convincingly portrays a range of characters, her work is particularly striking when she writes about the landscape of motherhood and the special vulnerabilities of being a stepmother, themes that she understands as surely as she does her Montana settings.
Rural Pride in the Walleye Capital of the World: Emily Fridlund’s HISTORY OF WOLVES
Loose River is a town where the two key descriptions of Christmastime are “competing nativity scenes” and the “strings of colored lights up and down Main Street.” Linda, the protagonist, thinks in terms of natural geography: her friend lives “in a trailer three lakes over.”
Beyond War: Jorge Argueta’s Poetic Memoir and Moving Beyond Displacement
As with other non-fictional accounts and ruminations on the Salvadoran civil war, Argueta is not afraid to look the violence and trauma of the war in the eye with Flesh Wounds: A Poetic Memoir.