Read This and Tell Me What It Says - by A Manette Ansay (Paperback)

About the Book

In her first full-length story collection, the author of "Vinegar Hill" explores the rural Midwestern landscape and the people who inhabit it in 15 haunting and exquisitely written tales.

Book Synopsis

Here are the lives of rural people struggling to make sense of the isolated and often intensely religious worlds in which they live. Marie, a young wife and mother, recalls the effects of a statutory rape trial on her small community. Stuart, a devout teenage boy, dares to rename himself "Start, " the only significant thing he has ever done without first consulting God. Widowed Eliza discovers her husband's ghost in the bathroom, flipping through pages of the Popular Mechanics magazines she had thrown out after his death.

From the Back Cover

In her first full-length story collection, author A. Manette Ansay explores the rural Midwest landscape and the people who inhabit it: ordinary folk with extraordinary inner lives, struggling to make sense of the isolated, sometimes painful, and often intensely religious worlds in which they live. Her are 15 haunting and exquisitely written tales that offer a rare and unforgettable glimpse into the complexities of being human and being alive.

Review Quotes

"A. Manette Ansay's stories map the distances between ourselves and other worlds. In doing so, they remind us of how necessary our dreams and desires are to the fragile lives we piece together, and how, as much as anything, it is the act of creating and living that brings joy and redemption." - Jonis Agee, New York Times Book Review
"The characters...are like geodes: plain on the outside, but revealing, when split, unexpected colors." - Los Angeles Times Book Review