Strange Attractors: The Ephrem Stories
In Janice Deal's linked story collection STRANGE ATTRACTORS, everyday people navigate the uncertainties of life in the American heartland, seeking order in chaos with a very human mix of resilience and folly. At first glance, the fictional Ephrem, Illinois, seems a friendly, familiar town: it draws you right in, even if you don't need supplies at the mall or a snack at Brat Station. But as you come closer, you discover people who are complex and unpredictable. Life itself is capricious, and loneliness can turn a person strange. Past traumas linger. Illness sometimes falls like a hammer. Yet there's much affection here, small and large examples of human kindness. For years, Janice Deal has been publishing these award-winning stories about Ephrem. Now assembled for the first time, these extraordinary tales offer a masterful snapshot of life in today's small-town America.
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Janice Deal is the author of a novel, THE SOUND OF RABBITS, and a previous story collection, THE DECLINE OF PIGEONS. The former placed as a finalist for both the Many Voices Project annual competition and the Black Lawrence Press Big Moose Prize. THE DECLINE OF PIGEONS was a finalist in the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Stories from her new collection, STRANGE ATTRACTORS, have won THE MOTH Short Story Prize and the CAGIBI Macaron Prize. Janice has also received an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award for prose. She lives in the Chicago area.
Ephrem, Illinois, IS America, with its winking welcome lights that don't stay on all night, its jaunty, sinister mall, and its legendary lake-fish, "Jingles." The characters in these linked stories will unsettle you, and break your heart--some by the depths of their courage, and others by the moments they break, becoming unwitting agents of change. Hope and fear will grip you in equal measure. Flannery O'Connor would recognize and applaud the vivid, muscular prose and powerful vision of Janice Deal.
-Marjorie Sandor, author of PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER, WHO POSED NUDE IN WARTIME (Winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Fiction)
--Marjorie Sandor, author of PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER, WHO POSED NUDE IN WARTIME (Winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Fiction) "Marjorie Sandor, author of PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER, WHO POSED NUDE IN WARTIME (Winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Fiction)"Not since the abrupt--and welcome--rediscovery of Lucia Berlin's short fictions in 2015 have I read such a marvelous story collection as Janice Deal's STRANGE ATTRACTORS. In a quietly luminous and deceptively steady voice, Deal mines the lives and burdens of the generally overlooked citizens of Ephrem, Illinois, a semi-rural community college town near the Wisconsin border. She makes her gallery of strangers our intimates in the way Willa Cather once did.
-James Magruder, author of VAMP UNTIL READY
-- "-James Magruder, author of VAMP UNTIL READY"In the tradition of WINESBURG, OHIO, this hauntingly beautiful collection of linked stories by Janice Deal features vivid, unforgettable characters inhabiting the fictional town of Ephrem, Illinois. This is a town where smart people read string theory but may not be headed for college, where teenagers itch to leave but can't fully escape, where many struggle with demons--alcohol, income insecurity, and reputations seared into the collective memory. The stories in this collection ask the question: Can we ever really leave home? In STRANGE ATTRACTORS: THE EPHREM STORIES, Deal has created her own strange attractor, a world that pulls the reader in and leaves an indelible mark.
-Jan English Leary, author of THICKER THAN BLOOD, SKATING ON THE VERTICAL, and TOWN AND GOWN
-- "-Jan English Leary, author of THICKER THAN BLOOD, SKATING ON THE VERTICAL, and TOWN AND GOWN"
