Godforsaken Idaho

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Godforsaken Idaho
224 pages; Little A / New Harvest

The Winner with That Unexpected Twist


This collection of powerful stories, by the ex-Mormon Shawn Vestal, was called a "slam-dunk debut" that "casts a cinematic shadow on the American West" by O magazine last year. This year, it won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.  Why you'll love it? The mix of everyday people struggling through everyday life (e.g,, a teenager seduced into robbing houses with his father) and fantastical fiction (e.g., a heaven with a cafeteria that serves every meal you ever had in your life). Or, as the O magazine reviewer wrote, "The doubters in these stories lose religion, but find that 'nothing that happens has to be real, and anything is possible.'"