Clifford Garstang

Fiction. The author of the award-winning What the Zhang Boys Know ("...utterly beautiful and unforgettable"--Kevin Wilson) now gives us a heart-rending first novel about love, displacement, and the powerful ghosts that haunt so many families. The Alexanders have farmed the land in Turtle Valley for generations, and their family and its history is tied to this mountainous region of Virginia in ways few others can claim. When Gulf War veteran Aiken Alexander brings home a young and pregnant South Korean bride, he hopes at long last to claim his own place in that complicated history--coming out from behind the shadow of his tragically killed older brother and taking up a new place in his father's affections. However, things do not go according to plan. His wife, Soon-hee, can't--or won't--adjust to life in America. When Soon-hee disappears with their son, Aiken's life and dreams truly fall apart--he loses his job, is compelled to return to the family home, and falls prey to all his worst impulses. It is at this low point that Aiken's story becomes interwoven with a dubious Alexander family history, one that pitted brother against brother and now cousin against cousin, in a perfect storm of violence and dysfunction. Drawing on Korean beliefs in spirits and shamanism, how Aiken solves these problems--both corporeal and spiritual--is at the center of this dynamic and beautifully written debut novel.

The Shaman of Turtle Valley

Twenty stories, twenty writers, set in twenty countries. This volume compliments volumes I and II, without repeating countries, except for the United States, where the state do not repeat.

Short Fiction from a Small Planet

Everywhere Stories

Tracy Crow

Valerie Nieman

Editors' Selections for Issues 23, 29, 31 and 37 from Prime Number Magazine.

Prime Number Magazine, Editors' Selections

"What the Zhang Boys Know has a dozen chapters, each one a vivid short story in itself. Garstang makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The lives of the inhabitants of a condominium in Washington, D.C.'s Chinatown are told separately and as part of a web of entanglements. The entrances and exits are handled with the deftness of a French comedy, but the empathy of the author brings all the characters achingly alive. What the Zhang Boys Know is a wonderful and haunting book." - John Casey, author of Compass Rose and Spartina, winner of the National Book Award

Clifford Garstang

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