Little Miseries

Set in Iowa and Minnesota in the 60s and 70s, Little Miseries is a Midwestern Gothic where sometimes the misery is just that--little--and sometimes it is epic and yawning, capable of swallowing every childhood memory. There are the miseries the Castles will talk about--old family lore about a great, great, great uncle who was split in two while connecting railroad cars--and the misery none of them will face. There are days at the lake, placid except for inexplicable tension the parents won't address andthe three Castle children don't have names for. There are stories about sex and gore at cocktail parties, around bonfires, at sleepovers, in classrooms, and in the newspaper. Everyday growing pains are shadowed by the abduction of a local girl, reports of a massacre of nurses, and the harm done by strangers and by those who are charged to care for children. To survive childhood is to survive all of these miseries and tragedies, because growing up means waking up to a world that can be random and brutal--