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**Winner of a 2021 PenCraft Award**
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Stealing Away is a collection of twelve stories by Kevin Revolinski, author of The Yogurt Man Cometh: Tales of an American Teacher in Turkey and Wisconsin’s Best Beer Guide. Available as a paperback and ebook January 19, 2021. (published by Back Burner Books)
“STEALING AWAY is a lush, shimmering collection, at once globe-trotting and far-afield, and also somehow as intimate and quotidian as any small hometown. Revolinski, an accomplished non-fiction writer, proves with this book that he has incredible range, wisdom, and empathy. I raced through this collection of short stories and can’t wait to read more of Revolinski’s fiction. A fantastic debut.”
— Nickolas Butler, NYT bestselling author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Little Faith
“It was the summer before senior year when Danny and I decided the adults in our lives had irredeemably failed us, and so we hit the road.” A teenage girl pins her hopes on her boyfriend’s illegal scheme to run away from a dead-end, small-town life. Two orphans find meaning in a discarded canteen and the death of a stray dog in the Mexican desert. Obsessed with a local murder story, an accountant imagines the crime and questions her marriage. Heartbroken and unhinged, a delirious traveler crosses borders in the Middle East. A cynical backpacker tests his moral resolve in South America. Haunted by a childhood tragedy, a man returns to his small-town neighborhood for answers. The characters in these thoughtful twelve stories struggle to find purpose and choose between escape and making peace with their lots. “Whatever scene Revolinski drops his reader into, you feel like you are really there.” – Citizen Reader
“With the insight of a world traveler and the heart of a kind Midwestern neighbor, Revolinski’s dark, engrossing stories find flickers of hope in a disorienting world.”
— J. Ryan Stradal, award-winning author of The Lager Queen of Minnesota and Kitchens of the Great Midwest
“At last, a book that gets the Midwest right. And I don’t mean the “Midwest” that appears in most published literary fiction. I mean the actual Midwest, complete with houses containing furniture bought at St. Vincent de Paul, both interstates and tiny country backroads, Wal-marts, and gravel driveways. Author Kevin Revolinski has a nice touch with description, and whatever scene he drops his reader into (and the locations here are not exclusively in the Midwest), you feel like you are really there.
The stories are realistic and clear-eyed, but even when things start to turn ugly, they don’t always end that way (and Revolinski doesn’t dwell on ugliness just for the sake of doing so, which this reader appreciates).
I love Revolinski’s way of writing female characters, which doesn’t belittle them or simply make them objects to look at, but truly makes them fleshed-out human characters with not always predictable motives and actions of their own.
I found these accessible, very readable, but still very thoughtful stories, and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. The author is also a travel writer and blogger, and his attention to the details and nuance of place and landscape is shown off to very good effect here.”
— Sarah Cords, author of Bingeworthy British Television: The Best Brit TV You Can’t Stop Watching and The Real Story: A Guide to Nonfiction Reading Interests
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