Bluetongue boutiques and Other Michigan Stories by Shek, Ryan NEUF

"The characters in Bluetongue and Other Michigan Stories recall those of Jim Harrison or even Hemingway; their circumstances are shot through with tragedy, both befallen and self-inflicted. Engaging and surprising, and told in prose remarkable for its sentence-by-sentence loveliness as well as its precision, these linked stories are exactly what good fiction should be: satisfying but also heartbreaking.

"Set against the regions beauty - its farms and woods and lakes, its still-wide swaths of wilderness - these stories show us not just cautionary tales, the case and effect of lifetimes of choices, but imperfect, grace-filled human lives."

- Hadley Moore, author of Not Dead Yet