Do you think you
could beat me up?
American Salvage
New from award-winning Michigan writer Bonnie Jo Campbell, American
Salvage is rich with local color and peopled with rural characters who
love and hate extravagantly. They know how to fix cars and washing
machines, how to shoot and clean game, and how to cook up methamphetamine,
but they have not figured out how to prosper in the twenty-first century.
Through the complex inner lives of working-class characters, Campbell
illustrates the desperation of post-industrial America, where wildlife,
jobs, and whole ways of life go extinct and the people have no choice but
to live off what is left behind.
The harsh Michigan winter is the backdrop for many of the tales, which are
at turns sad, brutal, and oddly funny. One man prepares for the end of the
world--scheduled for midnight December 31, 1999--in a pole barn with
chickens and survival manuals. An excruciating burn causes a man to
transcend his racist and sexist worldview. Another must decide what to do
about his meth-addicted wife, who is shooting up on the other side of the
bathroom door. A teenaged sharpshooter must devise a revenge that will
make her feel whole again. Though her characters are vulnerable, confused,
and sometimes angry, they are also resolute. Campbell follows them as they
rebuild their lives, continue to hope and dream, and love in the face of
loneliness.
Laura Kasischke, author of The Life Before Her Eyes, says: "A strong collection. The pieces are rich in original detail, and highly
atmospheric, while maintaining a sense of familiar territory, local
voices."
And click here to read a Booklist starred review.
For a full schedule of readings and workshops, visit http://americansalvagestories.blogspot.com/
Q Road
The nice things that people say (under no threat whatsoever)...
Click here to read some excerpts.
Click here to check out the Publicity Kit.
Click here to buy a copy of Q Road.
Click here to read some excerpts.
Click here to buy a copy of Women and Other Animals.
Click here to buy a copy of the German translation, Gorilla Girls.
Click here to read an excerpt.
Click here to buy a copy of Our Working Lives.
Click here for more information on Bottom Dog Press.
"Boar Taint," published in the Kenyon Review
A story at Diagram magazine
http://www.eurekasolutions.net/monica/bonniejo.html
Another interview (by Kenyon Review editor Geeta Kothari)
Q Road
Women and Other Animals
Our Working Lives
Stories online
Interviews online
American Salvage
By Bonnie Jo Campbell
By Bonnie Jo Campbell
Welcome to Q Road, in Greenland Township, where the old way of life is colliding with the new. On the same acres where farmers once displaced Potawatomi Indians, suburban developers now supplant farmers and Q Road (or "Queer Road," as the locals call it) has become home to an unlikely mix of people. The neighbors include a sixth-generation farmer and his rifle-toting child bride, an evangelical bartender, a tabloid-reading agoraphobe, a philandering window salesman, and an asthmatic boy who longs for the love of a good father. These folks all smell the pig manure from the Whitby farm and share the same grand views of the Kalamazoo River and the oldest barn in the township--until one disastrous October afternoon.
Now out in paperback!
Bonnie Jo Campbell's first novel combines offbeat humor, eccentric characters, and unique insights into modern rural America, where family traditions have flown the coop and only the cycle of the seasons remains. At the heart of this tale are three characters so integrally connected and devoted to the Harland farm that they might not survive anywhere else; their lives, their livelihoods, and their sometimes violent love for one another are all rooted in the soil of this square mile.
As The Village Voice said of Campbell's story collection, she "crystallizes those moments when benumbed everyday routine is briefly jolted by dizzy instants of brutal lucidity." It may take a spring tornado or a lightning bolt in the garden to get the folks of Q Road to pause in their work, but when they lift their gaze collectively, it can be life-altering. Brilliant autumn foliage creates the backdrop for the rich and ragged human landscape of rural southwestern Michigan, a place Campbell has explored in her award-winning short stories. In this passionate and funny novel she digs even deeper, to reveal the beauty and strangeness of her ferocious women, confused men, and hungry children.
Now available auf Deutsch!
Our Working Lives
Edited by Bonnie Jo Campbell and Larry Smith
In this new collection about contemporary people facing the post-industrial age and the work of their lives we have stories about carpenters, painters, waitresses, nurses, teachers, plumbers, social workers, ushers, factory and cannery workers, car salesmen, hardware sellers, chicken butchers, junk dealers, miners, lifeguards, out-of-workers. It makes us realize how some truths must be spoken as stories. A strong collection appropriate for a general audience and for college readers.
Sniff out some of Campbell's stories online:
Online interviews
Monica Friedman searches for the truth about Campbell's fiction:
Women and Other Animals
Though Campbell never glamorizes poverty, she details a vision in which shabbiness, beauty, brutality, and wisdom all coexist, and the stories can be surprisingly optimistic, often funny. These women of Michigan's lower peninsula may live without automotive safety belts or televisions or the right kind of love, but they are able to trust their instincts and are ultimately drawn to whatever can save them.
