Strange Attractors: The Ephrem Stories

by Janice Deal

Overview

In Janice Deal's linked story collection STRANGE ATTRACTORS, everyday people navigate the uncertainties of life in the American heartland, seeking order in chaos with a very human mix of resilience and folly.

At first glance, the fictional Ephrem, Illinois, seems a friendly, familiar town: it draws you right in, even if you don't need supplies at the mall or a snack at Brat Station. But as you come closer, you discover people who are complex and unpredictable. Life itself is capricious, and loneliness can turn a person strange. Past traumas linger. Illness sometimes falls like a hammer. Yet there's much affection here, small and large examples of human kindness.

For years, Janice Deal has been publishing these award-winning stories about Ephrem. Now assembled for the first time, these extraordinary tales offer a masterful snapshot of life in today's small-town America.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940167665859
Publisher:	New Door Books
Publication date:	12/28/2023
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Janice Deal is the author of a novel, THE SOUND OF RABBITS (Regal House Publishing, 2023), and two short story collections: THE DECLINE OF PIGEONS (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2013), and a linked collection, STRANGE ATTRACTORS (New Door Books, 2023). She is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award for prose, and is currently working on a new collection of short stories.

Editorial Reviews

In the tradition of WINESBURG, OHIO, this hauntingly beautiful collection of linked stories by Janice Deal features vivid, unforgettable characters inhabiting the fictional town of Ephrem, Illinois. This is a town where smart people read string theory but may not be headed for college, where teenagers itch to leave but can't fully escape, where many struggle with demons—alcohol, income insecurity, and reputations seared into the collective memory. The stories in this collection ask the question: Can we ever really leave home? In STRANGE ATTRACTORS: THE EPHREM STORIES, Deal has created her own strange attractor, a world that pulls the reader in and leaves an indelible mark.

-Jan English Leary, author of THICKER THAN BLOOD, SKATING ON THE VERTICAL, and TOWN AND GOWN

Jan English Leary

Ephrem, Illinois, IS America, with its winking welcome lights that don't stay on all night, its jaunty, sinister mall, and its legendary lake-fish, "Jingles." The characters in these linked stories will unsettle you, and break your heart—some by the depths of their courage, and others by the moments they break, becoming unwitting agents of change. Hope and fear will grip you in equal measure. Flannery O'Connor would recognize and applaud the vivid, muscular prose and powerful vision of Janice Deal.

-Marjorie Sandor, author of PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER, WHO POSED NUDE IN WARTIME (Winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Fiction)

Marjorie Sandor, author of PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER, WHO POSED NUDE IN WARTIME (Winner of the National Jewish Book Award in - Marjorie Sandor

Not since the abrupt—and welcome—rediscovery of Lucia Berlin's short fictions in 2015 have I read such a marvelous story collection as Janice Deal's STRANGE ATTRACTORS. In a quietly luminous and deceptively steady voice, Deal mines the lives and burdens of the generally overlooked citizens of Ephrem, Illinois, a semi-rural community college town near the Wisconsin border. She makes her gallery of strangers our intimates in the way Willa Cather once did.

-James Magruder, author of VAMP UNTIL READY

author of VAMP UNTIL READY James Magruder