Strays Like Us

Ten stories. Ten American childhoods. Some lived in the present tense, some recalled from a wary distance, and some witnessed as a stranger's history unfolding nearby. What connects them is class: the kids in these pages grow up broke, or overlooked, or expected to carry more than kids should. A sixth grader rides a Richmond city bus with his hood pulled over a fresh bruise, working out, mile by mile, the difference between what his family calls survival and what the world calls greatness.
An eight-year-old in 1962 Arkansas watches his father drink his way through a dead wife and an unspoken hierarchy of whose pain gets tended to. A newspaperman nearing retirement is finally asked to write about the murder of an infant he's spent months avoiding, and finds out exactly how much empathy he has left to spend. A postcard pulls an eighteen-year-old out of rural Arizona and across the country, toward a mother who left before she could walk.
Strays Like Us is a literary short story collection isn't just about the weight handed to children before they're ready for it, though. It's about what they do, or don't do, with it.  Fans of Bonnie Jo Campbelle, Raymond Carver, and Caitlin Horrocks will find familiar terrain: quiet devastation, working-class specificity, and an unflinching eye for what goes unsaid. Includes: Trisomy, Don't Sit Still, Julio: Conqueror of the Crowbar, Men of Action, Q&A, Flask, Rasp, Heel to Lung, Ear to Ear, Pass This Off As Love, and Dear Holly, be Right.