The Lawless River by Shaun Turner

Fiction
48 pages
5.5" x 7" single signature with hand sewn binding
Published January 2016

In the nine shorts that comprise Turner’s debut collection, we’re treated to a lively look at his native Kentucky. Setting comes to life in these stories as we tour a land where folk are as likely to pass the time waiting to capture a snake in a noose as they are to be caught up in a great flooding river. Readers, similarly, will find themselves ensnared by Turner’s gorgeously simple prose, wanting to inhabit these small towns, rural creeks, pumpkin growing contests, and church revivals for as long as possible.

“Snakes, a marauding bear, a gigantic pumpkin—
in Shaun Turner's exquisite chapbook, they throw his protagonists into startling and revealing light. This is a book grounded in Kentucky—its landscapes, its people, its language—but its themes of love and loss are universal. Shaun Turner is a young writer to keep an eye on in the future—and to read now.”

—Mark Brazaitis, author of The Incurables: Stories (University of Notre Dame Press)