American Salvage

Acknowledgments

 Heidi Bell, Carla Vissers, Andy Mozina, and Lisa Lenzo are the best friends a writer could have, and these stories sing their praises. Christopher Magson’s good humor and good husbandry have made the book possible, and Jaimy Gordon has wised it up. Thank you, Melissa Fraterrigo, Rachael Perry, and Donna Sparkman for going carefully through the collection. Various stories (and my writing life) are better because of Susan Ramsey, Jamie Blake, Gina Betcher, Glenn Deutsch, Shawn Wagner, Elizabeth Kerlikowske, David Dodd Lee,Tom Campbell,George Campbell,Loring Janes, Jaci Dillon, John Weaver, and Don York, and of course Susanna. The events and characters depicted in these pages are fictional, but my hometown of Comstock, Michigan, where many of these stories could have taken place, is very real. Gratefully acknowledged are the magazines in which these stories originally appeared: “The Trespasser” appeared in Witness; “The Yard Man,” “The Inventor, 1972,” and “Fuel for the Millennium” appeared in The Southern Review, and “The Inventor, 1972” won the 2009 Eudora Welty Prize for Fiction; “World of Gas”appeared in The Heartlands Today; “The Solutions to Brian’s Problem” appeared in Diagram; “Family Reunion” appeared in Mid-American Review and was originally read aloud and broadcast on a WBEZ Program, Stories on Stage; “Winter Life” and “Falling” appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review; “Bringing Belle Home” appeared in ACM; “King Cole’s American Salvage” appeared in Plaiedes; “The Acknowledgments Burn” appeared in Controlled Burn; “Storm Warning” appeared in Orchid: A Literary Review; “Boar Taint” appeared in The Kenyon Review. american salvage  ...