SHORT FICTION | AVAILABLE NOW
RECAPTURE
& Other Stories
by ERICA OLSEN
"Erica Olsen gives us the dream life of the Southwest in this striking collection, a landscape told in language as spare and pungent and exacting as the desert itself."
—KEVIN CANTY, author of Where the Money Went
In the stories of Recapture, a curator preserves silences in glass jars, a woman works in a larger-than-life-size replica of the Grand Canyon, a hug from a King Kong costume-clad unknown sparks an epiphany on the Empire State Building, and a bookmobile trundles through the deserts of southeastern Utah, its innards full of Jane Austen novels. Archaeology and history, love and loneliness, identity and preservation all wind through the collection, blurring the lines between the natural world and the world we create.
October 2012 | Short Fiction | 9781937226053 | 165 pp | $15.95
“Unsentimental stories that tell us what the American West looks like now and what we’ve lost; the Grand Canyon, for instance, can be seen only in replica after environmental catastrophe.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ERICA OLSEN lives in the Four Corners area, where she does archives and curation work for archaeology museums. A graduate of Stanford, Harvard, and the University of Montana MFA program, she has also been a Djerassi Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin. Her short fiction has appeared in ZYZZYVA, High Desert Journal, and other publications, and her nonfiction pieces in magazines including Fine Books & Collections and High Country News. Her work has received awards including the 2011 Barthelme Prize for Short Prose (for “Grand Canyon II,” included in Recapture).
PRAISE FOR RECAPTURE
A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST SHORT STORY COLLECTION OF THE YEAR
“Unsentimental stories that tell us what the American West looks like now and what we’ve lost; the Grand Canyon, for instance, can be seen only in replica after environmental catastrophe.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL
“Erica Olsen gives us the dream life of the Southwest in this striking collection, a landscape told in language as spare and pungent and exacting as the desert itself. A swift and lovely debut from a writer of real gifts.”
—KEVIN CANTY, author of Where the Money Went
“These sly, heartbreaking stories capture the modern West, where the past is ever-present and the future is already here.”
—ALISON BAKER, author of How I Came West, and Why I Stayed
“Beneath their polished surfaces, Erica Olsen’s stories are subversive, sometimes darkly funny, and always disquieting.”
—SUSAN LOWELL HUMPHREYS, author of Ganado Red
"Recapture is a living, breathing museum of natural wonders. With writing as spare as the landscape she evokes, Olsen wades through the detritus of the human experience and finds clarity there, and some magic, too."
—ZYZZYVA
"A gem, a small collection of stories that is a pleasure to read and consider."
—TERRAIN.ORG
"Olsen's deft use of language creates stories that exude not only loneliness and longing, but also dark humor."
—SUNDOG LIT
"These are sexy stories that are never explicit, knowing exactly which details are necessary for their effect and describing no more."
—TOTTENVILLE REVIEW
"True to its name, Recapture grasps after lost loves, fading histories, and shifting landscapes to bring us an expertly curated series of human exhibits in an expansive, outdoor museum."
—THE MUSEUM OF AMERICANA
"A sharp, wise new voice from the American West, Erica Olsen is the real thing. As wild as David Foster Wallace or George Saunders and as tender as James Salter or Alice Munro, Olsen's stories are hilarious, painful, and achingly lovely."
—AMANDA EYRE WARD, author of Close Your Eyes
"Like all good narratives, Erica Olsen's "Grand Canyon II" suggests great consequence. The past is another country. The task of memory is impossible. No one exists and nothing ever happened. But somewhere in your brain, a beautiful lie is being spun…"
—SARAH MANGUSO, author of The Guardians
"Recapture is like a lost map of the backcountry, detailing the forgotten places where secrets shove up through the dust, pieces of lives demanding to be made whole. The territory is endlessly illuminating and constantly surprising, revealing a master storyteller at work."
—KIM TODD, author of Tinkering with Eden
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