Description

A collection of raucous stories that offer a panoramic view of New Orleans from the author of the stunning and audacious (NPR) debut novel We Cast a Shadow.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin has an uncanny ability to reveal the hidden corners of a place we thought we knew. These perspectival, character-driven stories center on the margins and are deeply rooted in New Orleanian culture.

In Beg Borrow Steal, a boy relishes time spent helping his father find work after just coming home from prison; in Ghetto University, a couple struggling financially turns to crime after hitting rock bottom; in Before I Let You Go, a woman who's been in NOLA for generations fights to keep her home; in Fast Hands, Fast Feet, an Army vet and a runaway teen find companionship while sleeping under a bridge; in Mercury Forges, a flash fiction piece among several in the collection, a group of men hurriedly make their way to a home where an elderly gentleman lives, trying to reach him before the water from Hurricane Katrina does; and in the title story, a young man works the street corners of the French Quarter, trying to achieve a freedom not meant for him.

These stories are intimate invitations to hear, witness, and imagine lives at once regional but largely universal, and undeniably New Orleanian.