
Boneyard
Stephen Beachy(Author)
Visible Spectrum (Publisher)
Published on 12. May 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
300 pages
978-1-953835-11-6 (ISBN)
Description
Jake Yoder, a precocious boy caught between Amish culture and the modern world, sits in his sixth-grade classroom writing stories at the behest of a stern but charismatic teacher. His stories feature children who are crushed, imprisoned, and distorted, yet flailing around with a kind of bedazzled awe, trying to find their way out. His characters traverse South American plains, fenced-in farms, exotic cities; find themselves in mental institutions, one-room schoolhouses, prisons; his sentences appear constructed to the beat of an obsessive internal rhythm.
The disturbing shifts in Jake's tales and their strange internal logic reveal a young boy processing emotional experiences in the wake of his mother's suicide and his own proximity to the schoolroom shootings at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in 2006. Jake imagines fantastic journeys, magical transformations, and rock stardom as alternatives, it seems, to his own grim reality and the limitations of his life among the Amish.
What emerges is "a twisty, turny, funny, damning fairy tale that happened neither long ago nor far away but every day and here" (Rebecca Brown).
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 133 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
383 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-953835-11-6 (9781953835116)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
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Person
Stephen Beachy is the author of the novels Glory Hole, boneyard, The Whistling Song, and Distortion, the twin novellas Some Phantom and No Time Flat, and the Amish sci-fi series that begins with Zeke Yoder vs. the Singularity. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Evergreen Review, BOMB, The Chicago Review, New York magazine, and elsewhere. He is the prose editor of the journal Your Impossible Voice, teaches at the University of San Francisco, and lives in San Diego.