Reviewer/retailer information
“Normalcy is pliable. It moves as we move, adjusting itself to our lives.”
In acclaimed-author Karen Lee Boren’s new story collection, Ways Home, women and men, young and old, face past demons and confront current struggles, striving for brighter futures.
These 14 authentic, very human, stories traverse the country, stopping in big cities and small towns, introducing us to:
A girl cursed by the song “Jolene”
A ballet dancer in a tug of war between discipline and youth, family and friendship
A young widow lost and looking for home
An expectant mother forced to fight for her own and her child's future
Unwanted and unavoidable ghosts dredged up with a Trans Am and a long-lost boy’s body
And so much more
Every story reveals the lives of people up against the uncertainties of the world, time, and their own best and worst selves. Never hopeless, always striving, they find the strength and determination to aspire, to get by, and to maybe, just maybe, be happy.
“No one does girls ready to brawl better than Karen Lee Boren. This world is one overlooked, an upper Midwest peopled by the half hopeful, half resentful, who steer, knowing they better be ready to fight or at least look ready. The language bangs out toughness and rock ‘n’ roll and not-a-lot-of life options and makes you nod—yeah, that’s real.”
“This is why we read short fiction! These stories throw you in the passenger seat beside real and realized characters who scream at you, cheat on you, plot your murder, and abandon you, but you will love them anyway. Boren’s collection dazzles in range and scope, with stories that arc lifetimes to flash pieces that explode mere seconds. These pages are soaked through with wisdom, and every story asks dire questions and leaves you thinking, questioning, wondering. Intense, brutal, hopeful, and true, Ways Home keeps coming for you, and it will get you.
”
“On the move, these stories walk, trot, race, searching for that ephemeral thing called home. Open and curious in parts, windswept and melancholic in others, characters in this collection come together to remind us that no place is ever enough for the vagrant human heart. Physical, rhythmic, touched by desire.”
A portion of the proceeds of Ways Home goes Amos House of Rhode Island, serving the homeless, unemployed, and those who are living in poverty.
