Voices in the Dirt: Stories
A dozen stories set from NYC to LA, Asheville to Varanasi. Young people, mostly male, wrestle with the specter of an incomprehensible world. A banquet server seeks enlightenment by being buried alive (breathing apparatus included!). The son of a dentist confronts an unspeakable horror at an oil baron's mansion. Karmic retribution is served after a tourist on the Ganges steals a human jawbone from a beached corpse as a ghastly souvenir. Transgressive, darkly comical, surreal, with notes of melancholy, Voices in the Dirt is a new collection of stories, some loosely autobiographical, all of them perturbed. If you like wild rides without safety bars, then have a seat.
"This book is demented. But it's not only demented, it's also funny. And not just demented and funny, but kind of sad as well. Just what you might expect from too much Waffle House coffee in the middle of the night."
-Benedetto Rabindranath, a discriminating reader of unusual fictionEarn by promoting books
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Ian Caskey is an alchemist of a purely American style, rendering pathos and transgressive energies into tales that simmer with deep humor and subtle beauty. What propels them is the vernacular, a voice indeed issued from the dirt of 'Merica's underground. These stories scratch itches you didn't know you had, or tried to repress, and perhaps even afflict you with new pricks and burns to which Caskey alone might provide a soothing palm.
-Sean Madigan Hoen, author of Songs Only You Know (Soho Press, 2014)
