When you're trapped in a Rust Belt town, time passes or it doesn't. The people of Westinghouse, Ohio know this better than most. In DELINQUENTS, their personal worlds expand and collapse in on themselves as they battle addictions, build scrap-metal rocket ships, and tether themselves to plans that will either get them out of dodge or blow up in their faces. A former Deadhead seeks sobriety in his hometown, though his decades-old childhood trauma has been exhumed and now awaits him. A sometimes-recovering addict asks his younger sister to put him up as he repairs cars in their yard and she scrabbles to keep her own sanity. A woman intending to follow her boyfriend out of town wonders why a newcomer in Westinghouse has captured her latent interest. Nick Rees Gardner's linked stories portray people as they are: alternately hilarious, desperate, resilient, broken. For the characters contained in DELINQUENTS, the crux is determining which they'll be when the music stops.
"Simply put, Delinquents and Other Escape Attempts is a triumph of literary brilliance, and it is one I will never forget."
-Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez and Fire Exit
"A tonal echo of Sherwood Anderson's Midwest, along with Denis Johnson's recognition that addiction and storytelling provide different but related escape hatches. An excruciating, gorgeous debut."
-Emily Fridlund, author of the Man Booker Prize finalist History of Wolves and Catapult: Stories
"In fiery prose reminiscent of Denis Johnson, yet fiercely his own, Nick Rees Gardner writes of tragic misfits on the verge of salvation, almost but never quite sober, reaching toward the light."
-Kevin Maloney, author of Red-Headed Pilgrim and others
"A dazzling debut... among the most beautiful elegies to addiction. It searches for, and finds, that jolt. Highly, highly recommend."
-Brian Allen Carr, author of Opioid, Indiana and Bad Foundations
"The stories are suffused with a palpable sense of place.... And the prose is alliterative and earthy, making use of streetwise analogies that ground it in realism."
-Joseph S. Pete, Foreword Reviews
"Beneath all the dazzle and whir and gash-edgedness of these unique and uniquely American stories lies the most revolutionary heart: an affinity for kindness, and repair. These stories, kicking and sizzling, are an inescapable reminder of who we were, and where we are: still, always, desiring to love and be loved."
-Rick Bass, author of the Story Prize-winning collection For a Little While
Nick Rees Gardner is a writer, critic, writing teacher, and beer and wine monger. His books include, So Marvelously Far, (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2019), an accounting of addiction and recovery in the Rust Belt; and Hurricane Trinity (Unsolicited Press, 2023), a climate change novella. He has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the De Groot Foundation, and DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He lives in Ohio and Washington, DC.
