“An affecting set of well-wrought literary tales. . . . the best ones provide more than a mere window into ordinary people’s lives–they present a measured examination of the human condition. Other standout pieces include “Across the Vermilion Border,” “The Woman with a Miniature Donkey,” and the title story, which concludes in a moment of earned beauty that will stay with readers for some time.” –Kirkus Reviews
Characters in the eleven stories in Nowhere Near act in ways that some might call “divinest madness.” Some of them have been pushed near their limits by years of stress. Others mourn and grieve and discover feelings they can’t admit aloud. A sense of duty drives another to believe in aliens, at least for a while. Some of their behavior is simply laughable, other flirts with death, and the rest ranges from dangerous to near heroic. These characters vary widely, yet all have in common that they live in or come from West Texas, where spaces are wider and tolerance for strangeness seems just a bit greater. Whether readers agree these characters are nowhere near crazy, they may admit they all are doing what humans do—what makes sense to them at the time.
