by Michael Henson
Ohio University Press, 2018
Cloth: 978-0-8040-1201-0 | Paper: 978-0-8040-1202-7 | eISBN: 978-0-8040-4091-4
Library of Congress Classification PS3558.E562W39 2018
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.54

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK

Finalist, 2019 Weatherford Award (Fiction) • A Great Group Reads Selection for National Reading Group Month from The Women’s National Book Association


Set in Appalachian Ohio amid an epidemic of prescription opiate abuse, Michael Henson’s linked collection tells of a woman’s search for her own peculiar kind of redemption, and brings the novel-in-stories form to new heights. Maggie Boylan is an addict, thief, liar, and hustler. But she is also a woman of deep compassion and resilience. The stories follow Maggie as she spirals through her addictive process, through the court system and treatment, and into a shaky new beginning.


In these masterful stories, we rarely occupy Maggie’s perspective, but instead gain a multilayered portrait of a community as we see other people’s lives bump up against hers—and we witness her inserting herself into their spheres, refusing to be rebuffed. The result is a prismatic view of a community fighting to stay upright against the headwinds of a drug epidemic: always on edge, always human.



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