Books in the Driftless Unsolicited Novella series

Victoria G. Smith, named an outstanding writer by the Chicago Filipino Asian American Hall of Fame, explores the Filipino diaspora with magic, lyricism, and humor.Ousted years ago from the Malacañang Palace in Manila, where he healed the people’s ailments with the power God sent through his hands, Victor Mariano has made a peaceful, if lonely and uncertain, life for himself as the caregiver “Tita Vee” in a California long-term care facility.Victor is no stranger to living as neither one thing or another—not a man or a woman, not a fraud or a miracle, not black or white or Filipino. Like the sacred mountain that chose a penniless intersex bastard to receive the gift of healing, Victor lives on the very edge of where any other human could travel.Faced with crisis and deportation, tormented by the loss of his unbelievable gifts, Victor has nothing left but memories and a remarkable story of multiple abandonments, faith and disbelief, palaces and poverty. Hair graying, with no hope even of escape, his own tale might be the only way to save the twisted heart of a cruel racist who threatens the small peace he has forged.Faith Healer is a book of tremendous depth and tenderness, a fearless exploration of how small and ordinary tragedies twist a life into a cruelty of social injustice, loss of faith, yearning for love, and literal exile.

"There were little sins and big sins, and if you committed too many little sins you were more likely to go on to the big ones. Some sins you did in your mind and then, sometimes, you went on to let yourself fall into them."Darkly witty and compulsively readable, Barbara de la Cuesta's novella lets us into the private life and secret thoughts of Rosa, an undocumented home health aide grappling with menopause and her unruly body, unexpected romance, grown children who alternately worry her and fill her with pride, and how life is confronting her with everything she has ever denied herself or hidden away from. Rosa is a natural storyteller, insightful in hindsight about her own motivations and unflinching in her willingness to look at the girl she was and the woman she has become. Rosa is a daring, funny, and emotional story about a woman moving her life out of the margins and into the sun with the power of confession.

Fenella has done a Very Bad Thing. She keeps the decapitated head in her freezer to prove it.Stefanie Moers introduces the remarkable Fenella, an unsettling and seductive deviant whose command of witchcraft is either a delusion or dangerous. As the evidence against her piles up, she compels everyone — her attorney, her sister, the courts — to go along with her, even as they try to resist the power of her chaotic charm.Readers of Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado, and Shirley Jackson will devour this darkly charismatic debut novella.