Books in the Switchgrass Books series

Welcome to Chicago, where black helicopters police a city of burnt-out neighborhoods, and punk themes of drugs, lost innocence, and sex do battle while our worst fears about growing up come to life. This title brings us a dystopian tale of a strangely familiar - and a strangely empty-city.

It's the summer of 1983. Ronald Reagan is in the White House, Princess Leia is on magazine covers, and Thea Knox is on the road. Fresh out of college, Thea is driving solo from California to New York. Her plan is to house-sit for her parents for the summer, but they sell her childhood home on a whim, leaving Thea (once again) to her own...

We are guilty of actions that make no sense. We perform acts of beauty and acts of ugliness. We give in to hidden ambitions, latent hungers, and clumsy grasps at insight. At the heart of these stories are the rituals-grand and small-in which we humans partake; the peculiar gestures we hope will forge meaning or help us glean some sort of...

Epic and nonlinear in nature, A Good High Place chronicles the lives of two womenLuella and Kachinawho, like the orbit of the sun and the moon, both attract and repel each other. Luellas suspicion that her younger sisterwho supposedly died at birthis being raised as the sister of Kachina sets her on a path of self-discovery that generates more questions than answers. The Native American Kachina is an enigma, a person with a special healing touch who, it is rumored, never ages, leaves no footprints, and might never die. Her goal is to help her people, the Aninshinaabek, remain on the Red Path and resist being absorbed by white culture. To do this, she takes guidance from what she refers to as The Day, guidance Luella assumes can be \u201cnothing less than the murmured confidences of God pouring from the sky.\u201d Ultimately, Kachina and Luella find friendship among the conflicts of culture, duty, and even loving the same man.Set during the years prior to World War I in Elk Rapids, Michigan, A Good High Place addresses familial struggles and those of a nation moving inexorably toward the age of the automobile. The sometimes painful adaptations of a faster-paced age are embodied, in part, in the struggles of Luellas father who, already troubled by the death of his wife, wrestles with the realization that his livelihood as a steamboat captain is becoming obsolete.

Nancy Zafris is a critically acclaimed writer because of the highly distinctive, piercing intelligence that underlies her works. Her gifts accumulate in a vision that somehow combines just the right amount of irony, subtle humor, and compassion for characters you won't see anywhere else in contemporary fiction. Those characters are emotionally all over the map too: resolute, sympathetic, and indelibletheir stories can be laugh-out-loud funny one minute and bittersweet the next. In The Home Jar, Zafris reconfirms herself to be among the keenest observers of the human condition around. This is her first short story collection since the critically acclaimed The People I Know, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and her most famous work, the New York Times notable novel The Metal Shredders. Zafris's very loyal following of readers will herald The Home Jar as a major event in American letters.

Deep in the landlocked heart of the Midwest, the characters in The Spoils are drowning under the weight of masculinity, paralyzed in the grip of things left unsaid. These men are broken and breaking, struggling to reckon with the decisions they've made and those they have yet to face. Set mostly in and around Kansas, the stories in this...

This sprawling, footnoted, comedic epic centers around Vonn Carp, who travels to his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, for a funeral. He is returning disgraced and destitute, when, after a long and productive career in higher education, he was discovered to have falsified his academic credentials 20 years prior. Recently divorced and suddenly unemployable, he reluctantly agrees to join his father, Milt, in what he considers an iffy business ventureDollarapalooza, a family-owned dollar store.For Milt the shop is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for old fashioned mercantilism, a \u201cgeneral\u201d store. The store falls on hard times when a massive, big box \u201cWow-Mart\u201d opens across the street and after a nearly tragic armed robbery in his store, Milt disappears. To the surprise and chagrin of the Carp family, Vonn insists on re-opening Dollarapalooza. Along with the stores eccentric staff, Vonn fashions an alternative business model aiming to make a difference in peoples lives \u201cone dollar at a time.\u201d For just one dollar, Vonn will answer anybodys question on any topic, and the citizens of Columbus come to him seeking his opinions on subjects like love, celibacy, anthropology, metaphysics, the Internet, and the true meaning of value. Through his interactions with the stores staff and customers, he conceives a new way of life with a changed outlook and a restored sense of purpose.

Tells the story of an isolated Michigan town that becomes the flash-point for some of the principal ideological debates of our day. This story is about the failure of best intentions and the personal freedom of individuals to do good or do harm. It follows characters on both sides of the line.

Set in Chicago, this title features Nix, a college instructor whose novel has flopped. Although he and his pregnant wife are struggling financially, their fortunes change when Nix is asked to ghostwrite the memoirs of publishing magnate Zira Fontaine.

In exchange for the checks, the uncle asks Gideon Anderson to come up with a plan for his life. Gideon, who went to a prestigious university, puts his uncle off and spends the money on alcohol, the horses, and a miscellany of useless purchases partly because he doesn't know what to do, partly because he doesn't want to do anything.

Finalist, 2015 Midwest Book Award Chicago Book Review Best Book of 2015 Set in the frozen wasteland of Midwestern academia, The Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath introduces Wilson A. Lavender, father of three, instructor of women's studies, and self-proclaimed genius who is beginning to think he knows nothing about women. He spends much of his time...

Six years later, the author has returned with a bracing new collection of short stories that will do for the center of the country what Cheever did for the suburbs of New York. This title explores the complexities of human interactions and imbues them with an honest naturalism that is sure to endear him to readers - in the Midwest and beyond.

It's 1974 in DeKalb County, Illinois, and the planets have failed to align for Roy Conlon. Widowed and broke, he finds that his eight-year-old son Eric is suddenly a mystery to him. And as powerful forces pull Eric away, Roy's efforts to hold onto his son are threatened by weakness, guilt, and his participation in a foolish crime.

Balladeer of the city's broken and forgotten men, the author looks for inspiration in urban side streets and alleys, where crooked schemes are hatched, where lives end violently, and where pretty much everyone is up to no good. He depicts the lives of people who have woefully lost their way in the world.

Gabriel Burke is a writer who is alienated from everyone, and loves for exposing a discomforting family secret. Divorced from his wife, estranged from his daughter, and loathed by his alcoholic brother, Burke must confront all of them when he returns to his hometown in Smallwood, Indiana, to chronicle the story of a gruesome mass murder there.

Follows the journey of Paulus Kempf, a fugitive labor agitator who takes refuge with a colony of Finns on the remote shores of Lake Superior. Kempf, a former surgeon, poet, writer, sculptor, and hyperintellectual, is at first deeply impressed by the folklore and traditions of the Finns. But he soon begins to play upon their superstitions...

During a deadly Chicago heat wave that's claiming hundreds of lives, Robert, who's stuck in his apartment alone, fears he's going to be the next victim. One day, Robert ventures forth into the searing heat to gas up his car. Immediately he encounters enigmatic Lucy who is trying to escape her brutal fiance, Matthew Gliss.

Set in 1957 in rural northern Michigan, this title tells the story of a pivotal few months in the life of young teen Danny DeWitt, who lives alone with his father following the sudden departure of his mother.

In Neom the laws of physics are lax and everyone still gets high. The city squares do it so they can keep working nonstop. And, for a thousand years, Alison has done it to cope with the burdens of immortality. If you can't die, she says, at least you can be as stoned as the living dead.

Imagine a hawk's view of the magnificent bluegrass pastures of Kentucky horse country. Circle around the remnants of a breeding farm, four beautiful horses grazing just beyond the paddock. Inside the ramshackle house, a family is falling apart. Hack, the patriarch breeder and trainer, is aged and blind, and his wife, Louetta, is confined by...