Lyrics for Rock Stars: Stories

0 review(s)

Price: $17.97

Description

BY HEATHER MATEUS SAPPENFIELD
198 Pages, Paperback
Release Date: 09/21/2020

IBPA BEN FRANKLIN SILVER AWARD 2021 - COVER DESIGN: SMALL FORMAT, FICTION

This prize-winning collection brings to life skiers, ranchers, cyclists, suffragettes, tourists, super models, dead pigs, burro racers, religious beet farmers, immigrant miners, scorned lovers, penitent centenarians, and musicians.

Some historical, some contemporary, its stories revel in their Western settings, as varied as the region’s landscape. Yet each story explores the ways society’s values clash with our individual desires, compelling us, despite tears or laughter, to weave our lives through these opposing forces, often creating not a lifeline, but a noose.

IBPA SILVER AWARD WINNER: https://www.ibpabenjaminfranklinaward.com/winners-cover-design-fiction

A 2021 AudioFile Earphones Award Winner: https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/reviews/read/198690/lyrics-for-rock-stars-by-heather-mateus-sappenfield-read-by-michael-crouch/

PRAISE FOR LYRICS FOR ROCKSTARS: STORIES:
"Welcome to the beautiful state of Colorado. Meet its inhabitants. Visit all the most spectacular sites, and a few dark and scary ones too. In Lyrics for Rock Stars, Heather Mateus Sappenfield has drawn a map of the Colorado mountains and written a legend that describes the inner workings of its people’s hearts."
—Camille T. Dungy, author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers, National Book Critics Circle Awards Finalist and Guggenheim Fellowship Recipient

“An exploration of the inner lives of marriage and mountain towns, the stories in Lyrics for Rock Stars rise like the foothills to meet the peaks…Sappenfield knows the modern West.”— Nicole Magistro, owner of Bookworm of Edwards & 2015 judge for Kirkus Prize for Fiction.

“[“Indian Prayer” is] finely observed…painstakingly crafted…Every element has been fitted in a way that rewards even an unpracticed eye turned to the hidden stitchery of fiction.” — The Review Review.

Wow!...a rousing literary adventure…Sappenfield’s courageous children bring you to tears as they work their way through the messes adults make for them. These vivid, muscular stories make me feel glad to be human. — Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, National Book Awards & NBCC Finalist

Stepping into the stories in Lyrics for Rock Stars is like stepping into lives you already know, people you’ve lived with, or if you don’t know them already, you’ll wish you did. Writing about the inhabitants of landscapes she knows by heart, Sappenfield makes her people come alive on the page and you’ll turn each of those pages hoping for them, pulling for them, realizing, slowly, that their lives are our own.

—Pete Fromm, author A Job You Mostly Won’t Know How to Do, Five-Time Winner of the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Award

Cutomer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars A rare must-read!
This book carried me through a full range of emotions - an exquisite collection. —Alicia
These Stories Will Sing To You
In Lyrics for Rock Stars: Stories Heather Mateus Sappenfield balances light and dark, pleasure and pain, and joy and sorrow all set in the urban and rural environs of Colorado, the Western state that I personally know the best. Sappenfield’s writing reminded me of Kent Haruf’s Eventide where the characters are plain-spoken, yet don’t always communicate very well with each other. Sappenfield jumps to the conflict without preamble and you feel like you’re there: tasting dust in your mouth or skiing off an embankment. Her writing crackles with intensity and you won’t easily forget these stories. My favorite ones involved the female adult characters (who all have very old-fashioned names like Elinor or Agnes or Dora) trying to find a new way forward such as “The Rusty Knife” and “Velvet Ropes.” Many of the stories ended too quickly, such as “The Call” about an estranged father who will meet his son’s family over Christmas. That one rang especially true for me, but I desperately wanted to find out how it ended. This collection ponders the truth of human choices and makes to feel what would you do in each of these characters’ difficult and defining situations. Read this book! —Alice Osborn

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Heather Mateus Sappenfield's writing explores the adventures that fill life, often in the Rocky Mountain landscape that has been her lifelong home. She's fascinated by the many selves each of us becomes in our varied roles throughout the day (some we like, some we do not), and her writing often delves into the internal adventure of juggling those multiple selves. Among the recognitions she's received are the Danahy Fiction Prize, the Arthur Edelstein Prize, three Pushcart Prize nominations, and finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Award, the Kraken Prize, and the Colorado Book Awards.

Follow Heather:
https://heathermateussappenfield.com/

https://twitter.com/alpineheather?lang=en

https://www.facebook.com/HeatherMateusSappenfield