One of the Best Books of 2020, Buzzfeed News The Millions' Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half of 2020 Book Preview The gripping, thought-provoking stories in Yxta Maya Murray's latest collection find their inspiration in the headlines. Here, ordinary people negotiate tentative paths through wildfire, mass shootings, bureaucratic incompetence, and heedless government policies with vicious impacts on the innocent and helpless. A nurse volunteers to serve in catastrophe-stricken Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and discovers that her skill and compassion are useless in the face of stubborn governmental inertia. An Environmental Protection Agency employee, whose agricultural-worker parents died after long exposure to a deadly pesticide, finds herself forced to find justifications for reversing regulations that had earlier banned the chemical. A Department of Education employee in a dystopic future America visits a highly praised charter school and discovers the horrific consequences of academic failure. A transgender trainer of beauty pageant contestants takes on a beautiful Latina contender for Miss USA and brings her to perfection and the brink of victory, only to discover that she has a fatal secret. These characters grapple with the consequences of frightening attitudes and policies pervasive in the United States today. Murray not only explores our distressing human capacity for moral numbness in the face of evil but also reveals our surprising stores of compassion and forgiveness. These brilliantly conceived and beautifully written stories are troubling yet irresistible mirrors of our time.
Yxta Maya Murray is the author of twelve books, including A History of Hazardous Objects: A Novel, along with the books Art is Everything: A Novel and God Went Like That: A Novel. Murray has won a Whiting Award and has been named a fellow at the Huntington Library for her work on radionuclide contamination in Simi Valley, California.
It is also a force of nature.... Murray's writing honestly and directly exposes ongoing human behaviors we rarely talk about."-Story Circle Book Reviews "...fearless and revelatory.... It is absolutely essential reading."-Buzzfeed "Stories of life and bureaucracy intertwine in the wake of historic disasters, from the western wildfires to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Murray's stories feature the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, and the lives of regular people caught up in the all-too-familiar dystopian currents of the day."-The Millions "Murray's stories are chilling, well-crafted firecrackers that illuminate as much as they startle. With this collection, she affirms short fiction's power both to entertain and to tackle big issues."- Daniel A. Olivas, Los Angeles Review of Books "Most writers are afraid of tackling these issues head on; Murray should be commended for not backing away and urging the reader to look with her." - Maceo Montoya, author of The Scoundrel and the Optimist "Murray's style is, by turns, sarcastic, witty, sobering, didactic, poignant, informative-and full of corazOn. I believe it is a significant contribution."-Patricia Santana, author of Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility
