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From Edgar Award-winning author Erika Krouse, a visceral, dazzling collection of stories set across the globe about characters desperate for salvation.
Erika Krouse's debut memoir, Tell Me Everything, was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "lyrical, jarring, propulsive," and the Washington Post as "mesmerizing on every page." Now, with an electrifying new collection of stories, Save Me, Stranger, she further cements her reputation as an essential voice.
From the coldest town on earth to a sex shop in Bangkok to a haunted bed-and-breakfast in the Rockies, we meet characters at hinge moments. A runaway fights for her future while driving an ice-cream truck in gang territory; a cleaning woman investigates the teenager who died in her stead; a terminal patient in Alaska discovers new life in helping others die. This collection explores the borderlands between humor and hurt, community and self, and hope and despair, redefining what it means to survive.
Scalpel-sharp, unsparingly funny, and achingly wise, Krouse's expansive stories build to unforgettable emotional catharses, as these men and women must decide how far they are willing to go to save one another―and themselves.
"Though Krouse's stories are emotionally sensitive and precise, they don't foreground style much, coolly and crisply delivering details and imagery...Krouse is gifted at capturing her characters' dueling frustrations, needs, and fears. A smart set of globetrotting, emotionally gripping stories." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Fierce and unforgettable…These no-holds-barred stories often feature young women in trouble, sometimes of their own making but more frequently not…While danger lurks around the corner for all of Krouse's characters, sometimes compassion saves the day." —Booklist (starred review)
"[A]ffecting...This is worth a look." —Publishers Weekly
"Save Me, Stranger is a book of parables―supernal and sinister. Disturbing but comforting. Read these stories with a buddy, because someone will have to scrape you off the floor." ―Louise Erdrich, author of The Sentence and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award
"In this far-ranging and visionary collection, Krouse extends the reach of what stories can do, delivering a dozen little masterpieces of heart and longing and surprise. Save Me, Stranger is at once a treatise on tender moments and a symphony of storytelling." ―Adam Johnson, author of Fortune Smiles and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Story Prize
"I really enjoyed this book. Some of its remarkable power is that the stories alternate between embodying epiphanies and valedictions―sometimes a quick goodbye, but always with an authenticity that convinces the longer it lingers. They'll stay in your mind." ―Ann Beattie, author of Onlookers and winner of the PEN/Malamud Award
This information about Save Me, Stranger was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
© Michael Horner
Erika Krouse is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Two new books are forthcoming with Flatiron Books (Macmillan): Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation, and Save Me: Stories. Tell Me Everything will be published on March 15, 2022; it was optioned by Playground Entertainment for TV adaptation. Erika's novel, Contenders (Rare Bird Books), was a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and appears in German with Aufbau-Verlag. Her previous short story collection, Come Up and See Me Sometime (Scribner), won the Paterson Fiction Award, was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and is translated into six languages.
Erika's short fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire.com, Ploughshares, One Story, The Kenyon Review, Alaska ...
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