Bad Kansas: Stories (Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction Series #89)

By: Becky Mandelbaum

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Synopsis: The eleven stories in this Flannery O&’Connor Award-winning collection explore Midwestern life &“with heart and precision, and a fresh sense of humor&” (Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted). These beautifully crafted stories reveal the complicated underbelly of the country&’s most flown-over state and the quirky characters that call it home. In this darkly humorous collection, Kansas becomes a state of mind as Mandelbaum&’s characters struggle to define their relationship to home and what it means to stay or leave, to hold on or let go. When a desperately lonely woman finds herself on a bad date with a rugged man, she must decide whether to sacrifice the life of a bear in order to keep the man&’s affection. After having a nightmare about a mallard, a young man wakes to discover he&’s choking the woman he loves. When his mother starts dating a slimy pizza parlor owner, a young boy must carefully consider his loyalties. The appealing and peculiar characters in Bad Kansas are determined to get what they want, be it love or sex or power, in a world determined to overlook them.

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