Nobody Gets Out Alive: Stories

"The women in this absorbing debut collection are larger than life, perhaps because this is what the harsh Alaska landscape demands ... These stories are rich with wit and wisdom, showing us that love, marriage, and family are always a bigger and more perilous adventures than backcountry trips ... Bighearted stories of domestic discord by a writer with a cleareyed view of Alaska's romance and hardscrabble realism."--Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"From Newman, whose memoir Still Points North was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle's John Leonard Prize, Nobody Gets Out Alive highlights women struggling to get by in rugged Alaska."--Library Journal, pre-pub alert

"I have never been to Alaska, but it came alive for me from many wonderful angles in Leigh Newman's irresistible fiction debut. I didn't want Nobody Gets Out Alive to end -- to have to leave behind its warmth and soul and glittering writing, its honesty and its laughter in the dark. The stories in these pages are, as one memorable character in this book observes of another's tall tales, 'funny and self-lacerating and so horrifically precise about our love and fury for each other.' You feel you're in the company of a writer who has embraced unpredictability and breathes deeply while seeing far."--Jonathan Lee, author of The Great Mistake

"The stories in Nobody Gets Out Alive are big and lush, full of exuberance, sorrow, and swagger. The characters roam highways, rivers, backwoods, and bus routes searching for something immense. Their boundless needs and vast hopes have nowhere to go except Alaska--a place that Newman brings wholly to life for us, alongside delight and devastation."--Chia-Chia Lin, author of The Unpassing

"Nobody Gets Out Alive is a thrilling collection. Leigh Newman's indelible characters chart the turbulent waters of hope and regret in an Alaskan landscape that crackles with danger and wonder. These are gritty and powerful stories, from a wildly gifted writer." --Laura van den Berg, author of I Hold a Wolf by the Ears

"Leigh Newman's Nobody Gets Out Alive is a fierce, funny, heart-wrenching book. With wit and precision, Newman lays out the entrails of the frontier narrative--part fortune-teller, part taxidermist--and shows us the bravery that masks recklessness and desperation, and the entwined beauty and devastation of Alaska's landscape and people."
--Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It

"Emotionally astute and slyly funny, Nobody Gets Out Alive is a commanding examination of home, family, intimacy, and self-reliance. With exacting precision and endless wit, Newman gracefully leaps into any perspective she pleases--you get the impression she's not only writing unforgettable, brilliantly complex characters, she's somehow inventing souls. This is a stunningly beautiful debut collection by a masterful prose stylist."--Kimberly King Parson, National Book Award Finalist, Black Light

"Nobody Gets Out Alive is an astonishingly beautiful collection: wickedly smart, psychologically rich and expertly crafted. Every one of these stories knocked me sideways. Leigh Newman is one of the wisest, funniest and most compassionate writers working today."--Molly Antopol, author of The Unamericans

"Behold a storyteller completely at home in herself. Each story in Nobody Gets Out Alive flashes a new facet of Leigh Newman's singular style. This is a stellar collection with wit and wisdom galore."--Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn, Gold, Fame, Citrus, and I love you but I've chosen darkness

"Nobody Gets Out Alive is a stunning debut collection, with the most generous ratio of wickedly funny details to devastating plot lines. It's a joy to travel through these characters' overlapping Alaskas, where violent longings go thrashing under the frozen stillness of the everyday, and the hard, hot work of navigating the wilderness of family can give way at any moment to 'a dazzle of ice and blue and light.'"--Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!