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An astonishing novel of epic ambition, Vandal Lovewinner of the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first book in 2007follows generations of a unique French-Canadian family across North America and through the twentieth century.A family cursea genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardshipcauses the Herv children to be born either giants or runts. Book One follows the giants line, exploring Jude Hervs career as a boxer in Georgia and Louisiana in the 1960s, his escape from that brutal life alone with his baby daughter Isa, and her eventual decision to enter into a strange, chaste marriage with a much older man. Book Two traces a different kind of life entirely, as the runts of the family discover that their power lies in a kind of unifying love. Franois seeks the identity of his missing father for years, while his own son, Harvey, flees from modern society into spiritual quests. But none of the Hervs can abandon their longing for a place where they might find others like themselves.In assured and mystically powerful prose, Deni Y. Bchard tells a wide-ranging, spellbinding story of a family trying to create an identity in an unwelcoming landscape. Imbued throughout with a deep sensitivity to the physical world, Vandal Love is a breathtaking literary debut about the power of love to create and destroyin our lives, and in our history.

Let me begin today, illumined by Thy light, to destroy this part of the natural man which lives in me in its entirety, the obstacle that constantly keeps me from Thy Love. Taught this prayer as a boy by his grandfather, James Dressler recites it each time hes tempted by earthly desires. Originally drawn to the priesthood by the mystery, purity, and sensual fabric of the Church, as well as by its promise of a safe harbor from his tempestuous home, James finds himself just a few years after his ordination attracted again to his first love, Betty Garca. Torn between these opposing desires, and haunted by his familial heritage, James finds himself at a crossroads. Exploring age-old and yet urgently contemporary issues in the Catholic Church, and infused throughout by a rich sense of the history and vibrant texture of St. Paul, this is an utterly honest and subtly lyrical novel.

If by 1970 I had started to slip, it wasnt by much. To make more of the decline would be easy: exaggeration resonates in candor. My income had fallen, though not to any depth. That would have required a spectacular reversal, and, contrary impulses notwithstanding, I seem to avoid spectacular actions of any kind. I still had plenty of money in 1970, more than my neighbors could reasonably hope to come by, yet not so much anymore that I could forget them. My lawn was no longer quite big enough nor my hedges high enough.Neil Fox has made a fortune off the heads we win/tails you lose venture capital deals negotiated by his brother, costing him almost everything but money. His ex-wife and daughter spurn him, and he lost his young son years ago. He now lives a carefully plotted life, working as a lawyer at a small investment-banking firm and spending nights at home with a drink.When the affable Bud Younger moves in next dooron a parcel that Neil had sold offNeil takes an almost instant dislike to him. Bud is nearly everything Neil is nota gregarious, energetic striver loved by his intact family. When Bud asks Neil to

Every winter, Tommy Jack McMorsey watches the meteor showers in northern Minnesota. On the long haul from Texas to Minnesota, Tommy encounters a deluded Japanese tourist determined to find the buried ransom money from the movie Fargo. When the Japanese tourist dies of exposure in Tommy Jacks care, a media storm erupts and sets off a series of journeys into Tommy Jacks past as he remembers the horrors of Vietnam, a love affair, and the suicide of his closest friend, Fred Howkowski. Exploring with great insight and wit the ways images, stereotypes, and depictions intersect with, Extra Indians offers a powerful glimpse into contemporary Native American life.

In “I Am Death: Bartleby the Mobster,” muckraking journalist Jack finds himself increasingly over the edge when he agrees to ghostwrite the autobiography of a Chicago mob boss. In “Peasants,” publishing employee Walter Rasmussen discovers he’s the victim of sabotage by his coworkers — or is he? As in his stunning debut, Visigoth, Gary Amdahl here isolates his characters in crisis and flux, drawing out their deepest fears. With its vivid wordplay and blend of black humor and pathos, I Am Death demonstrates that Amdahl is a most adept and honest guide into the modern psyche of the American male.

Widely regarded as one of the most progressive and educated states in the nation, Minnesota boasts a rich literary tradition. Writers from Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald to Louise Edrich and Garrison Keillor have called it home. Like the rest of America, Minnesota has seen enormous changes over the century and a half since its founding. Population has skyrocketed, particularly into the suburbs ringing the city. Family farms have yielded to agribusiness, and waves of immigrants have given it a new, more diverse identity. Selected for both literary merit and to reflect the state''s increasing changes, this anthology presents a literary mosaic of Minnesota at the outset of a new century. With writings by and about an extraordinarily wide range of voices and characters, including powerful work by Sarah Stonich and Éireann Lorsung, Fiction on a Stick is an essential collection for fans of the North Star State, regional fiction, and serious literature.

Full of defiance and tenderness, Aquaboogie chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of the residents of Rio Seco. In “Aquaboogie,” art student Nacho finances his class out East by working as a janitor, subject to torment by his white coworkers. In “Back,” elderly Pashion sleeps wrapped around the body of her dying husband L. C., all the while recalling their 49 years of marriage and thinking about the sleeping pills she has secreted away for when life becomes unbearable. In “The Box,” Shawan carries her radio everywhere; since her best friend was gunned down, music is the only thing that can get her through the day. In these and other stories in this powerful collection, the author gives voice to those on the margins while demonstrating her great affection for her characters.

A supermarket clerk in a small dusty town, 22-year-old Libby is full of dreams but lacks the means to pursue them. When her younger sister Tess becomes pregnant, Libby convinces her not to have an abortion by promising to raise the child herself. But then Tess takes off after the baby is born and Libby finds that her new role puts her dreams that much further away. Her already haphazard life becomes ever more chaotic. The baby's father, a Christian rodeo rider, suddenly demands custody. Libby loses her job, her boyfriend abandons her, and her own mother harps on how stupid she was to make that promise to Tess. More than a story of a single mother overcoming obstacles, Sky Bridge is a painfully honest, complex novel that leaves readers with a fresh understanding of what it means to inhabit a world in which dreams die, and are sometimes reborn.

Over the course of six critically acclaimed booksincluding a compelling meditation on Moby-DickDan Beachy-Quick has established himself as one of Americas most significant young poets (Lyn Hejinian).In Wonderful Investigations, Beachy-Quick broaches a hazy line, a faulty boundary between our daily world and one rich with wonder; a magical world in which, through his work as a writer, Beachy-Quick participates with a singular combination of critical intelligence and lyricism. Touching on the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Proust, and Plato, among others, Beachy-Quick outlines the problem of duality in modern thoughtthe separation of the mind and body, word and referent, intelligence and mystery, human and naturaland makes the case for a fuller kind of nature poetry, one that strives to overcome this false separation, and to celebrate the notion that wonder is the fact that the world has never ceased to be real.

What is a song but a snare to capture the moment? Eric Pankey asks in his new collection, Crow-Work. This central question drives Pankeys ekphrastic exploration of the moment where emotion and energy flood a work of art. Through subjects as diverse as Brueghels Procession to Calvary, Anish Kapoors Healing of Saint Thomas, Caravaggios series of severed heads, and James Turrells experimentation with light and color, the author travels to an impossible past, despite being firmly rooted in the present, to seek out "e;the songbird in every thorn thicket"e; of the artist's work. Short bursts of lyrical beauty burn away like coils of incense ash, bodies in the light of a cave flicker, coalesce and disappear. By capturing the ephemeral beauty of life in these poems, Crow-Work seeks not only to explain great art, but also to embody it.

In her highly anticipated new collection, Deborah Keenan sifts through inanimate objects and forgotten memories in search of personal validation. Her journal-like confessions create an instant bond with the reader, yet these seemingly simple poems daringly redefine common language. Keenan skillfully twists words to suit her ends, creating a colorful, dream-like world filled with lions, paintings, wars, and mummies. Throughout, she constantly reorganizes this world in an effort to realize her place in it.

The 1947 Partition of India is the backdrop for this powerful novel, narrated by a precocious child who describes the brutal transition with chilling veracity. Young Lenny Sethi is kept out of school because she suffers from polio. She spends her days with Ayah, her beautiful nanny, visiting with the large group of admirers that Ayah draws. It is in the company of these working class characters that Lenny learns about religious differences, religious intolerance, and the blossoming genocidal strife on the eve of Partition. As she matures, Lenny begins to identify the differences between the Hindus, Moslems, and Sikhs engaging in political arguments all around her. Lenny enjoys a happy, privileged life in Lahore, but the kidnapping of her beloved Ayah signals a dramatic change. Soon Lennys world erupts in religious, ethnic, and racial violence. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, the domestic drama serves as a microcosm for a profound political upheaval.

Based on the true story of Lowell's grandmother, this acclaimed novel offers a a compelling look at life in early 20th-century California as it tells the story of a young girl struggling to find her place there. Includes an Afterword by the author. Illustrations. Map.

Isabelle Lee has a problem, and it's not just Ape Face, her sister, or group therapy for an eating disorder, or even that her father died and her mother is depressed and in denial. It's that Ashley, the most popular girl in school, is inviting Isabelle to join her at lunch and at sleepovers at her house, and this is presenting Isabelle with a dilemma. Pretty Ashley has moved Isabelle up the social ladder, but is it worth keeping the secret they share? Caught in the orbit of popularity and appearances, Isabelle must navigate a world with mixed messages, false hopes, and potentially harmful turns, while coping with her own flailing family and emotions. The author brings a depth of characterization, humor, and a real adolescent's voice to this multileveled story about the desire to be perfect in an imperfect world.

Blank verse poems about history, culture, and language. Like a literal road atlas, the poems carry lines and themes from one to the next. Like Atlas holding up the world, they hold patterns of all kinds aloft with an attention that transforms. The poems also are an atlas of the known world, capturing the way events repeat across time and place, as in one poem that links the image of her sister, pausing in her work as housekeeper, with the contours of a maid in a Vermeer painting and a woman just "made over" on that day''s episode of Oprah. Vandenberg''s poems use family artifacts, memory, and imagination to plot the intersections of love, death, history, art, and desire. In the first section, "Trade Routes," about connections, each poem moves back one generation to investigate the ways events reverberate across time. The second section, "The Red Fields of Lisse (A Love Story)," focuses on a former partner, a hemophiliac with AIDS, and tulips. The third section, "Catalog of Want," contains poems about desire in various guises. The last section, "A Place Ten Years Away," reexamines the themes of the first three sections.

"The essential feature of the prairie is its horizon, which you can neither walk to nor touch."When there is no summit to reach nor farther shore to attain­­-only a constantly receding point between earth and sky to follow-a journey proceeds as much into one's own mind as it does into the natural world. Sauntering through the tall grasses of the prairie, Paul Gruchow engages in just such a boundless journey, exploring simultaneously the subtle beauty of the Great Plains and the mind's astonishment as such grandeur.Charting one cycle of seasons, Journal of a Prairie Year reveals countless cycles of thought: the innumerable sounds of winter snow beg us to understand its song; the fecundity of spring questions the accuracy of naming its abundance; the tenacity of prairie roots in a summer drought contrast with the shallow roots of our culture; and the mortality of fall mirrors our steady destruction of a once seemingly infinite expanse.The result is equal parts phenology and philosophy, a blend of natural and human history from a writer who "makes empty places full and a reader's imagination soar" (Washington Post): calling us to remember a threatened world, and urging us to reach for its unmarred horizon.

The western mindset is arguably one of the greatest threats to the world’s ecological balance. Corporatism and globalization are two of the obvious villains here, but what part does human nature play in the problem? Since its inception in 1982, Orion magazine has been a forum for looking beyond the effects of ecological crises to their root causes in human culture. Less an anthology than a vision statement, this timely collection challenges the division of human society from the natural world that has often characterized traditional environmentalism.Edited and introduced by Barry Lopez, The Future of Nature encompasses such topics as local economies, the social dynamics of activism, America’s incarceration society, naturalism in higher education, developing nations, spiritual ecology, the military-industrial landscape, and the persistent tyranny of wilderness designation. Featuring the fine writing and insights for which Orion is famous, this book is required reading for anyone interested in a livable future for the planet.

A pioneering ethnobotanist, Gary Paul Nabhan credits the arts with sparking unlikely scientific breakthroughs and believes that such "cross-pollination" engenders new forms of expression that are essential to discovery. In this highly readable book, he tells four stories to illustrate this idea. In the first, coping with color blindness in art class leads to his career as a scientist; in the second, ancient American Indian songs, when translated, reveal an understanding of plants and animals that rivals modern research; in the third, a poem inspires an approach to diabetes using desert plants; and in the fourth, a coalition of scientists and artists creates the Ironwood Forest National Monument in the Sonoran Desert.

First published in 1993, this pioneering anthology is a powerful polemic for fundamental cultural change: the transformation of basic attitudes about power, gender, race, and sexuality. The diverse contributors are activists, opinion leaders, theologians, policymakers, educators, and authors of both genders who tackle such not-button issues as pornography and the intersection of race and rape. The book's statistics have been thoroughly updated, as have essays about sexual violence in K-12 schools and in the church. New pieces from within America's immigrant communities depict struggles with domestic violence, sexual harassment, and community stigmas against reporting rape. This violence, not limited to one race, creed, or nationality, has its roots in cultural biases that are still much in need of change.

Immediately captivating, Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles introduces readers to Finley, an investigator of indiscernible origins and prowess who is assigned to a mysterious Professor Uppal and his puppets. The nature of the investigation isnt clear, but Finley nonetheless forges ahead, with occasional assistance from her colleagues Murphy, The Lamb, and Binelli, as well as the professors beautiful daughter and her sinister boyfriend. The investigation circles in on itself until Finley realizes that she may be close to discovering the truth about her forgotten life. Both whimsical and deeply serious, Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles casts a shadow that touches on literary novels, noir, and philosophical pursuits, bringing them all into the singularity of existence itself.

From the summer of my twelfth year I carry a series of images more vivid and lasting than any others of my boyhood and indelible beyond all attempts the years make to erase or fade them So begins David Haydens story of what happened in Montana in 1948. The events of that cataclysmic summer permanently alter twelve-year-old Davids understanding of his family: his father, a small-town sheriff; his remarkably strong mother; Davids uncle Frank, a war hero and respected doctor; and the Haydens Sioux housekeeper, Marie Little Soldier, whose revelations turn the familys life upside down as she relates how Frank has been molesting his female Indian patients. As their story unravels around David, he learns that truth is not what one believes it to be, that power is abused, and that sometimes one has to choose between family loyalty and justice.