Joyriders
Regular price
€21.99
A Dog's Tooth
A High-School Production of Titus Andronicus
A String of Lapis Beads
A01=Greg Schutz
American heartland fiction
American short stories
Appalachian tales
Author_Greg Schutz
bittersweet American fiction
Breeder's Cup
Category=FBA
Category=FYB
characters seeking redemption
complex character portrayals
contemporary American voices
contemporary literature
contemporary rural narratives
dark and tender fiction
debut short story collection
emotional depth in fiction
emotional honesty in fiction
emotionally charged storytelling
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
evocative rural settings
evocative storytelling
family bonds in fiction
fiction of moral complexity
fractured families in literature
fragile human connections
grief and healing in literature
haunting American landscapes
haunting rural stories
hidden worlds within characters
human resilience in stories
If I Needed You
intergenerational conflicts
landscapes as characters
layered human relationships
literary
literary explorations of family
literary meditations on love
literary short fiction
loneliness in American fiction
love and betrayal fiction
Midwest and Appalachia literature
Midwest literary voices
Midwest narratives
Midwest winter stories
modern short story voices
nature and human struggle
Not for Nothing
nuanced portrayals of grief
Pelican
poignant contemporary fiction
psychological depth in short stories
quiet desperation in fiction
rural America storytelling
rural melancholy
searching for meaning in fiction
short fiction
small-town life fiction
Somebody's Blood
South of Havelock
stark and beautiful prose
stark landscapes in literature
stories of inner conflict
stories of solitude
subtle emotional revelations
Ten Thousand Years
The Little Flashes
The Sweet Nothings
themes of atonement in literature
to Pull to Pieces
to Tear
To Wound
You Are the Greatest Lake
Product details
- ISBN 9781625348555
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 14 Mar 2025
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this debut collection, tangled bonds of love and family collide with a natural world both fragile and ferocious. Upended by grief, a widowed veterinarian seeks solace by fostering a litter of orphaned opossums. A young lawyer embarks on an affair, only to fall into a deeper, stranger entrancement with her lover’s nine-year-old daughter during a weekend on the Lake Huron coast. In the depths of a Wisconsin winter, a recovering alcoholic risks everything to plot a careening course toward atonement. And in the title story, two teenagers steal a car, discover a loaded rifle in the backseat, and set off consequences both devastating and tender for a series of strangers they’ll never meet.
Set across the Midwest and rural Appalachia, the stories in Joyriders offer a resonant vision of rural and small-town life: lonely, half-haunted landscapes are pierced with moments of light, and even the most taciturn faces conceal inner worlds both rich and strange. Comfort and heartache abound—entangled, inseparable. “What was Kevin suggesting,” wonders Valerie, after struggling for years to steer her innocent, angry, mysteriously afflicted son through the world, “that she loved him less because of his troubles? Oh, preposterous. More, she wanted to tell him, more.” Characters’ paths repeatedly bend in unforeseen directions, and the shape of each story surprises—illuminating, in this way, the surprising contours of entire lives.
Set across the Midwest and rural Appalachia, the stories in Joyriders offer a resonant vision of rural and small-town life: lonely, half-haunted landscapes are pierced with moments of light, and even the most taciturn faces conceal inner worlds both rich and strange. Comfort and heartache abound—entangled, inseparable. “What was Kevin suggesting,” wonders Valerie, after struggling for years to steer her innocent, angry, mysteriously afflicted son through the world, “that she loved him less because of his troubles? Oh, preposterous. More, she wanted to tell him, more.” Characters’ paths repeatedly bend in unforeseen directions, and the shape of each story surprises—illuminating, in this way, the surprising contours of entire lives.
Greg Schutz's stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Ploughshares, Story, and American Short Fiction, and have been listed among the distinguished stories of the year by both Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery Stories.
