THE WILD FAMILIAR: STORIES
by Shaun Anthony McMichael
$14.99
ISBN: 979-8332757105
Set in Washington State, The Wild Familiar comprises twelve stories featuring young people at the crossroads of the infinite and the carnal, the domestic and the untamed. Here they grapple with the untenable: race, gender, class, sex, drugs, and death. Economic collapse. Faith and doubt. And the devastation of worlds natural and personal.
A breakup story unfolds during a backpacking trip that turns into a mass shooting. A lone girl takes a dark odyssey with her father, reeling over his separation from her mother and descending into drug addiction. Two estranged brothers coping with the loss of their parents and inheritance in the ’09 housing crisis, find themselves outrunning a forest fire. Two misfit horticulturalists dual over their new tulip breeds in hopes of small-town recognition that freaks can be beautiful too.
Blending the grotesque with the sublime and the folksy with the hard-boiled, this uncanny collection unnerves and kindles inquiry as to the frailty and durability of the human spirit.
“Good stories hinge on conflict. McMichael pushes this wisdom to its limits…(These) stories never shy away from a difficult conversation or moment of discomfort. As such, The Wild Familiar delivers what its title suggests, relishing in gritty, near-universal truths…These stories are like the most sublime car crashes—painful, ugly, and impossible to tear our eyes from.”
–Michael Chin, author of My Grandfather’s An Immigrant and So Is Yours
"The Wild Familiar interrogates and laments the joyous and terrible ways we tether, sometimes without choice, to each other. The stories pick at these tethers, asking what is left of any of us when they are unwound."
-Amanda Bales, professor and author of Pekolah Stories
“Vivid, violent, and propulsive, the stories in The Wild Familiar reveal characters on a knife’s edge of trouble. Battling bruised egos, bigotry, the reverb of American history, and the brutalizing norms of contemporary American culture, the characters in The Wild Familiar struggle to find sure footing in uncertain terrain. A woman flees a mass shooter (and her past) in a night-blinded campground; a hair stylist contends with an overly enamored customer; girls on a road trip discover danger where it’s least expected, in themselves; brothers, caught in a wildfire and their lifelong rivalry, face mortality and their own natures. McMichael’s stories are gripping and graceful—he can make eating a fortune cookie dramatic, and AP history seem urgent and new. Even when portraying shocking violence, as these stories often do, he wrests from terrible circumstance surprising insight and beauty. A remarkable collection.”
–E.J. Levy, author of The Cape Doctor
"Every word McMichael writes feels like it’s been singed into the page. Whether he’s writing about snotty high school kids in a history class or a young couple running for their lives as a mass-shooter stalks them in the forest, it feels like McMichael is in the room with you, spittle flying as he preaches the gospel of great short fiction. But like the best kind of gospel (to my way of thinking anyway), the morals here, if there are any, are complicated and challenging, without any easy answers. These stories take on the big messy questions that cut to the quick of our current culture and they always manage to find the prickly spine of humanity without patting us on the back for being on the right side of any issue. Be wary: this book, like any great book of fiction, is going to challenge you to reconsider what you take to be the truths of your world."
–Benjamin Drevlow, author of The Book of Rusty and editor-in-chief at BULL
by Shaun Anthony McMichael
$14.99
ISBN: 979-8332757105
Set in Washington State, The Wild Familiar comprises twelve stories featuring young people at the crossroads of the infinite and the carnal, the domestic and the untamed. Here they grapple with the untenable: race, gender, class, sex, drugs, and death. Economic collapse. Faith and doubt. And the devastation of worlds natural and personal.
A breakup story unfolds during a backpacking trip that turns into a mass shooting. A lone girl takes a dark odyssey with her father, reeling over his separation from her mother and descending into drug addiction. Two estranged brothers coping with the loss of their parents and inheritance in the ’09 housing crisis, find themselves outrunning a forest fire. Two misfit horticulturalists dual over their new tulip breeds in hopes of small-town recognition that freaks can be beautiful too.
Blending the grotesque with the sublime and the folksy with the hard-boiled, this uncanny collection unnerves and kindles inquiry as to the frailty and durability of the human spirit.
“Good stories hinge on conflict. McMichael pushes this wisdom to its limits…(These) stories never shy away from a difficult conversation or moment of discomfort. As such, The Wild Familiar delivers what its title suggests, relishing in gritty, near-universal truths…These stories are like the most sublime car crashes—painful, ugly, and impossible to tear our eyes from.”
–Michael Chin, author of My Grandfather’s An Immigrant and So Is Yours
"The Wild Familiar interrogates and laments the joyous and terrible ways we tether, sometimes without choice, to each other. The stories pick at these tethers, asking what is left of any of us when they are unwound."
-Amanda Bales, professor and author of Pekolah Stories
“Vivid, violent, and propulsive, the stories in The Wild Familiar reveal characters on a knife’s edge of trouble. Battling bruised egos, bigotry, the reverb of American history, and the brutalizing norms of contemporary American culture, the characters in The Wild Familiar struggle to find sure footing in uncertain terrain. A woman flees a mass shooter (and her past) in a night-blinded campground; a hair stylist contends with an overly enamored customer; girls on a road trip discover danger where it’s least expected, in themselves; brothers, caught in a wildfire and their lifelong rivalry, face mortality and their own natures. McMichael’s stories are gripping and graceful—he can make eating a fortune cookie dramatic, and AP history seem urgent and new. Even when portraying shocking violence, as these stories often do, he wrests from terrible circumstance surprising insight and beauty. A remarkable collection.”
–E.J. Levy, author of The Cape Doctor
"Every word McMichael writes feels like it’s been singed into the page. Whether he’s writing about snotty high school kids in a history class or a young couple running for their lives as a mass-shooter stalks them in the forest, it feels like McMichael is in the room with you, spittle flying as he preaches the gospel of great short fiction. But like the best kind of gospel (to my way of thinking anyway), the morals here, if there are any, are complicated and challenging, without any easy answers. These stories take on the big messy questions that cut to the quick of our current culture and they always manage to find the prickly spine of humanity without patting us on the back for being on the right side of any issue. Be wary: this book, like any great book of fiction, is going to challenge you to reconsider what you take to be the truths of your world."
–Benjamin Drevlow, author of The Book of Rusty and editor-in-chief at BULL