North to Lakeville

Lakeville has fallen on hard times. But don't tell that to the locals: There's the former blues guitar player who never opens his case. The snake wrangler who worries about the bad intentions of his wife's artsy friends. The firefighter who fears retirement more than death. And the grandmother who is determined to hike to the top of Fernridge Mountain. Their intersecting stories, a full stringer of unfulfilled dreams and missed opportunities, are the kind of "fish tales" best told over a pint at Bebe's Tavern or in boat on Grady's Lake during those quiet moments before dusk.

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Praise

In the tradition of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, the Lakeville of Jason Kapcala's excellent story collection offers up a community of misfits whose unsteady lives are driven by alcohol, infidelity, and a perpetual failure to escape their baser selves. These are rich stories that explore the seedier side of small-town American life.

―Clint McCown, author of Haints

In the stories that make up North to Lakeville, Jason Kapcala reveals memorable characters in heartbreaking situations, told with the precision of a poet's sense of language. Through their foibles and small victories, we are reminded how extraordinary it is to be an ordinary human, the mark of a master storyteller.

―Renée K. Nicholson, author of Roundabout Directions to Lincoln Center

Lakeville is beautiful. I felt like I knew or wanted to know so many of the characters in this haunting, funny, and sharply observed collection. Each story holds a searing truth. Each narrator's voice is authentic. The people in Kapcala’s landscape see their world fully—the hardship, the humor, the dubious things we do because it made perfect sense at the time, the many wounded ways we try to love each other. Perfect for a stormy night with a warm fire and a good bottle of whiskey.

―Rebecca Barry, author of Later, at the Bar

―grit-filled tales of small-town lives ruined by their own self-destructive urges. Kapcala’s at his best when he’s at his darkest.

―East Bay Review

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Hungry TOwn

One October night in the depressed steel town of Lodi, Ohio, two police officers respond to a call about trespassers in the derelict Lodi Steel mill. A chase through the crumbling cathedral of steel columns launches a chain of events that will test the officers’ partnership and leave a boy to fend for himself in a hardscrabble Rust Belt neighborhood choked by joblessness, boredom, and addiction.

On the opposite side of town, a young woman steps out of a rust-bucket Grand Marquis into an all-night diner. Instead of luggage, she carries mementos: a tattoo she inked herself and a wallet-sized photograph of a boy who disappeared. She doesn’t realize her ex-boyfriend has hired two brothers to track her down and bring her back, by any means necessary.

The complex female leads of Hungry Town, with its sharp dialogue and poetic sensibility, turn classic noir and cop drama tropes on their heads. These morally complicated characters weave in and out of each other’s lives, sometimes violently, sometimes with surprising compassion.