Nocturnal America by John Keeble

“Like the setting, this book is rich and rewarding.”—Publishers Weekly

“Keeble’s Pacific Northwest [is] a rich and desolate landscape that
yields a limitless trove of both peril and passion. . . . Keeble is
adept at speaking from either the male or female point of view. . . .
Daily existence is a wild and precarious dance in Keeble’s world, where
lives gingerly balance between hope and grief.”—Booklist

“Nocturnal America, winner of the 2006 Prairie Schooner
Prize for fiction, is a supremely satisfying set of nine loosely
connected stories that interweave raw emotion, spiritual searching and
violence. . . . For the most part, the men and women of Nocturnal America
are as real as your next-door neighbor, struggling with matters of body
and spirit against an Eastern Washington backdrop of stark lines,
sweeping curves and treeless horizons. Keeble illuminates his
characters with uncommon clarity, showing the care of an author who’s
spent 30 years perfecting his form.”— Mary Ann Gwinn, Seattle Times

“Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in fiction, John Keeble’s beautifully rendered short-story collection, Nocturnal America,
examines the power of family, love and place. . . . The author’s feel
for people and place are key to this outstanding collection.”—Sybil
Downing, The Denver Post

“Writers write about the same 10 things over and over. Love, hate,
loyalty, betrayal, innocence, guilt, birth, death, hope, despair. . . .
There’s nothing new to write about. In the wrong hands, stories can be
too familiar. In the right hands, stories show us how we live. John
Keeble’s hands are the right ones. . . . [I]n issues of craft, Keeble
is first-rate.”—Ellen Slezak, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“[Nocturnal America is] fiction with characterization as deep and broad as any writer might draw—at times luminous, at times heartbreaking. . . . [T]he University of Nebraska Press proves again its ability to print what deserves to be published. . . . These stories have an edge so sharp it cuts, but they also hold the soft place of a conflicted heart. Writers like Keeble do not often tell us what we want to know, but they do tell us what we fear to know. If Nocturnal America is often dark, Keeble’s work also flickers with a distant light.”—Bloomsbury Review