Jubilee King : Stories

In the tradition of Sherwood Anderson and Flannery O'Connor, Jubilee King offers spare and deft navigations of the distance between people, between words, between moments. Jesse Shepard finds evidence of the grotesque in the everyday, the meaningful in the mundane. From a series of small but momentous occurrences, he has spun to a spirited and assured debut.

“In his debut story collection, set mostly in Northern California, Jesse Shepard proves tough, canny, wildly inventive.” —Seattle Times

“Wryly humorous, slyly ironic and subtly allegorical, these are teaching stories with just the right touch of skepticism, mordant dramas offering gruff lessons in life as they acknowledge the impossibility of ever being able to actually get to the bottom of things.” —Chicago Tribune

“Crisply bitten-off language and deadpan humor.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Shepard's piquant stories have a nervous energy, love of nature, and hunger for order all their own.” —Booklist