We Could've Been Happy Here - by Keith Lesmeister (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>In his first collection of short fiction, Keith Lesmeister plows out a distinctive vision of the contemporary Midwest. These stories peer into the lives of those at the margins-the broken, the resigned, the misunderstood. Hopeful and humorous, tender and tragic, these stories illuminate how we are shaped and buoyed by our intimate connections.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p>In his first collection of short fiction, Keith Lesmeister plows out a distinctive vision of the contemporary Midwest. A recovering addict chases down a herd of runaway cows with a girl the same age as his estranged daughter. A middle-aged couple rediscovers their love for one another through the unlikely circumstance of robbing a bank. A drunken grandmother goads her grandson into bartering his leftover booze for a kayak. The daughter of a deployed soldier wages a bloody war on the rabbits ravaging her family's farm.</p><p>These stories peer into the lives of those at the margins-the broken, the resigned, the misunderstood. At turns hopeful and humorous, tender and tragic, We Could've Been Happy Here illuminates how we are shaped and buoyed by our intimate connections with others--both those close to us, and those we hardly know.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>-A gritty, emotionally sensitive clutch of stories.-<br /> --<strong><em>Kirkus Reviews</em></strong></p><p>-A lovely heartache of a collection.-<br /> --<strong>Benjamin Percy</strong>, author of <em>The Dead Lands, Red Moon, Thrill Me, The Wilding</em> and <em>Refresh, Refresh</em></p><p>-The Middlewesterners in Keith Lesmeister's charming collection <em>We Could've Been Happy Here</em> share more in common with Ethan and Joel Coen's <em>Fargo</em> than any of Willa Cather's stalwart pioneers. But these characters and their stories are perfectly authentic, hilarious, and offbeat. This collection is the genuine article.-<br /> --<strong>Nickolas Butler</strong>, author of<em> Shotgun Lovesongs</em> and<em> The Hearts of Men</em></p><p>-These are brutal stories--brutally good, brutally urgent, brutally hopeful. In this extraordinary collection, Keith Lesmeister has granted his lucky readers a rare and stirring look into the soul of the middle west. His prose is as clean as the prairie wind, his characters as dangerous and refreshing as summer storms.<em>We Could've Been Happy Here</em> is a real achievement, a book that won't let you go and you're all the better for it.-<br /> --<strong>Bret Anthony Johnston</strong>, author of <em>Remember Me Like This</em> and <em>Corpus Christi: Stories</em></p><p>-Once in a great while, you pick something up, and its great, subtle beauty hits you slowly and hard like the wave of an ocean. That's the case for <em>We Could've Been Happy Here</em>, except the ocean is in Iowa. I've lived in the world that Lesmeister is showing us for over a decade, and the people who inhabit this collection are strange and sad and unique, and deeply familiar; I hurt for them. Collections like this only come around once in a while.-<br /> --<strong>Erika T. Wurth</strong>, author of <em>Crazy Horse's Girlfriend</em></p><p>-The deceptively quiet stories in Keith Lesmeister's <em>We Could've Been Happy Here</em> lay bare the inner lives of deceptively ordinary people in the deceptively normative state of Iowa. Like a heartland Chekhov, Lesmeister artfully refuses to tell us how things turned out--did that slacker stay sober? did that nice middle-aged couple who robbed a bank on a lark ever get caught? Instead, he reveals how things are in his characters' souls: often strange and dark, yet not without hope and love.-<br /> --<strong>David Gates</strong>, author of <em>Preston Falls</em> and <em>A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me</em></p><br>
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