Where Night Stops
Published on 1. February 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-1-945572-66-1 (ISBN)
Description
We're born with a finite number of opportunities. Attrition, bad choices, misspent goodwill, and fucked-up luck. The opportunities dwindle through a process called living. Our portfolio of prospects turns into a tattered novel of outcomes.
I am twenty-two.
Orphaned by a brutal car crash, a young man lives with no plans for the future. Leaving his small town of Windstop, Iowa, he finds his way to Seattle, where he ends up broke and sleeping in a homeless shelter. There he meets Ray-Ray, an Iranian with a shadowy past, who initiates him into a new life. When Ray-Ray disappears, the young man is left to fend for himself through carrying out clandestine drops for cash from an anonymous source. At first, it's perfect: living without the responsibilities of a real job or a proper home. But then the scope of his travels widens to Europe, Brazil, and China, leading him deep into a conflict of international proportion.
Soon, he finds himself targeted for death, but from whom or for what reason, he's not sure. The only thing that he's sure of is that if he wants to survive, he needs a plan-now. Because at noon, they're coming to kill him.
I am twenty-two.
Orphaned by a brutal car crash, a young man lives with no plans for the future. Leaving his small town of Windstop, Iowa, he finds his way to Seattle, where he ends up broke and sleeping in a homeless shelter. There he meets Ray-Ray, an Iranian with a shadowy past, who initiates him into a new life. When Ray-Ray disappears, the young man is left to fend for himself through carrying out clandestine drops for cash from an anonymous source. At first, it's perfect: living without the responsibilities of a real job or a proper home. But then the scope of his travels widens to Europe, Brazil, and China, leading him deep into a conflict of international proportion.
Soon, he finds himself targeted for death, but from whom or for what reason, he's not sure. The only thing that he's sure of is that if he wants to survive, he needs a plan-now. Because at noon, they're coming to kill him.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for Girls in Trouble"These are gems of stories, slyly, skillfully interrelated and captivating in their economy, truth, and acid wisdom."
-Frederic Tuten, author of Self Portraits: Fictions, The Green Hour, and Tintin in the New World
"Light deftly explores the rocky terrain of human emotion. . . . In the most subtle of manners, Light portrays the essential paradigm of adolescence. . . . [He] probes beneath complex layers of what it means to be alive, revealing the occasionally magnificent terrain of selfhood."
-Foreword
"Light enters the minds, hearts, and hurts of these characters with prose that is often lyrical, and always hypnotic."
-Heidi Durrow, author of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
"With this collection you will enjoy engrossing fiction tightly executed, but you will also get back in touch with your own humanity, further plumbing your own capacity for compassion and reflection."
-The Collagist
Light's stories go down easy...The stories are fun to read and...fun to see being put together one word and sentence at a time. Light makes it look easy."
-Short Story Reader
"Girls in Trouble is a fine and thoughtful collection of fiction, very much recommended."
-Midwest Book Review
Praise for East Fifth Bliss
"Set on New York's Lower East Side, this first novel by Light (founding editor, Epiphany) introduces Morris Bliss, 35 years old and living with his widowed father. Morris has big dreams of traveling all over the world. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a job or the means to take his aspirations beyond a collection of travel brochures and pushpins in a map on his bedroom wall. This fun read boasts a likable protagonist, other quirky and interesting characters, and vivid and humorous descriptions of New York while also providing some significant social commentary. The scene in which Morris and a former high school classmate (and father of the 18-year-old girl with whom Morris is sleeping) storm a vacant building in the middle of the night to roust out a group of homeless squatters is both funny and disturbing. Recommended for large public libraries with an interest in new and unknown authors."
-Library Journal
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
California
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 215 mm
Width: 143 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
316 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-945572-66-1 (9781945572661)
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
Person
Douglas Light is the author of Girls in Trouble, which won the 2010 Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction. He co-wrote The Trouble with Bliss, the screen adaptation of his debut novel East Fifth Bliss. His work has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Nonrequired Reading anthologies.