Lake Effect - by Hillary Behrman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2024 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, selected by Lauren Groff

A debut collection about the wild and hidden places in nature and the heart

From Seattle to Istanbul, Lake Effect, the debut short story collection by Hillary Behrman, takes you to unmapped mountain ranges, wild urban places and the outskirts of a desert outpost dissecting the many ways we love, labor and isolate ourselves from one another. In these stories characters are rarely headed where they want to be: Paula's real and dream life become indistinguishable. Oliver can't shed the hold of family lore as he negotiates his love affair with Daniel. Siblings, Alex and Marcie, are comforted and scraped raw by intimacy as they traverse the years from juvenile vandalism to a labor and delivery gone terribly wrong. Miles searches for his mother in a homeless encampment beneath a maze of freeways. These stories exist at the intersection of social isolation and fierce intimacies and call into question the limits of our well-intentioned efforts to care for each other.

Review Quotes

"A great short story is a glorious creature, sleek and sinuous, bearing very sharp teeth. A collection of them is redoubtable. [...] Hillary Berhman's Lake Effect is exactly this kind of exhilarating and wild book."
- Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

"The characters in Lake Effect are traveling unknown territories, both geographically and personally: they live between desire and understanding, and yearn to comprehend their relationships with others. Through an array of voices and places, Behrman asks us to be in conversation about what it means to exist in our world. Compassionate, original, and finely composed, these stories have a sense of adventure that makes the world seem larger. This collection has emotion, technical virtuosity, linguistic ferocity, and empathy. An outstanding debut."
- Nina McConigley, author of How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder

"From the gritty constraints of urban poverty to the ecstatic escape of the natural world, these stories take you on journeys that will transform and haunt you. Each character contains multitudes, each line is poetry, each scene feels as vital and meaningful as the most pivotal days of your own life. With enormous empathy and impeccable craftsmanship, Behrman probes the difficult lives of her characters and lays bare hard truths that others are afraid to utter. This masterful book is an essential addition to U.S. literature, and Hillary Behrman is a writer to watch."
- Valerie Laken, author of Dream House and Separate Kingdoms

"The stories in Lake Effect are written with such forgiving tenderness that every character, no matter how worn down or marginalized, becomes someone we know, someone we care about and worry about. Behrman lifts them all up to the light with masterly understanding and grace. Every one of these stories is deeply satisfying to read, and difficult to forget."
- Molly Gloss, author of The Hearts of Horses

"What's the collective noun for a group of hardscrabble stories so clear and compassionate, they break your heart? A Lake Effect. A Hillary Behrman. You will feel these beautifully resonant stories of resistance long after you finish reading them."
- Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark

"In a stunning debut collection, Hillary Behrman gives us a world of stories that covers a remarkable range of lives lived in both ordinary and extraordinary ways. In tough and evocative prose, Behrman renders moments that illuminate not only the lives of her characters, but our lives as well. These stories will take up residence in your heart and mind, linger long after the page is turned, the book closed. In short, Behrman is a writer to watch for."
- Claire Davis, Author of Winter Range, Season of the Snake

"Attentive, richly-detailed stories told with a signature cool compassion. Behrman creates, again and again, a kind of meditative stream of memory full of sore spots, private understandings and a litany of connections both found and missed. What lingers is her ability to conjure the secretive interior lives of characters in all their understated, overlooked, often inexpressible yearning."
- Cate Kennedy, Author of The World Beneath and Like a House on Fire

"Lake Effect has everything I respect and adore in a short story collection: Unforgettable, real, raw characters who have something new to say about our lived experience. Landscape powerfully rendered. Stunning writing. And stories that break and mend us. A gorgeous debut."
- Laura Pritchett, author of Three Keys and Playing with {Wild}Fire

"In this debut series of breathless stories, Hillary Behrman takes us into the cracked hearts, haunted landscapes and dire moments of her characters fractured lives. I look forward to wherever this writer takes us next."
- Avvy Mar, host of KBOO Portland radio's "Between the Covers"

"These gritty, gracious and deeply compassionate stories, told with an astonishingly distilled poetic voice, exude an alchemy of the ordinary, tender love between humans living in a difficult world, and were profoundly moving to my heart and soul. More please!!"
- Nancy Jean Burns, author of Moment by Moment

About the Author

Hillary Behrman's award winning short stories have been described as deeply humane and unsettling and have been published in journals, magazines, short story dispensers and an anthology. Lake Effect is her debut collection of short stories and was winner of the 2024 Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction. Hillary lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest where she has worked as a children's civil rights attorney and a public defender. She hopes this work lends urgency to her stories. She's the parent of two young adults and her life and writing are rooted in a strong sense of family, community service and a connection to wild places. Learn more at hillarybehrman.com.