"This collection is first-rate, and Pizzolatto is going to be wowing us for a long, long time to come." -- Steve Yarbrough author of Prisoners of War
“This is a wonderful book of stories by a natural writer. Nic’s beautiful, lucid prose seems to flow like water or like music....Nic knows how to write in the marrow of his bones. This will be the first of many brilliant books. Hooray for talent, that rare and lovely gift of the gods.” -Ellen Gilchrist, author of Victory Over Japan and Nora Jane
“Pizzolatto’s powerful fiction harkens back to the golden age of short
stories when O’Connor and the rest were working. He possesses an apparently unlimited imagination and the narrative skills to bring it to bear.” -William Gay, author of Provinces of Night
“These are bold, tender, and intelligent stories. Nic Pizzolatto writes about people who don't take loss lightly; they fight it. Whether searching for a disappeared daughter or underground son or for their own abandoned illusions, Pizzolatto's characters try to retrieve and recover their bets. That they rarely succeed doesn't matter. Interesting and beautiful things happen in Between Here and the Yellow Sea.” -Molly Giles, author of Iron Shoes
“These stories are violent, sad, and beautiful. They hang around long
after you've read them, like a long kiss, or a bruise.” -Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and Ray in Reverse
Set in a variety of Southern and Midwestern landscapes – from Missouri’s Ha Ha Tonka State Park to a crop circle at a Minnesotan farm – the stories in Between Here and the Yellow Sea excavate the ambiguous terrain of the human heart. With a forceful and compassionate voice, Pizzolatto finds beauty in loneliness as his characters attempt to bridge the gulfs between themselves and others, past and present, and, sometimes, between their inner and outer selves.
In this both heartbreaking and humorous collection, we meet a base-jumping, samurai park ranger who parachutes off the St. Louis Arch; a stained glass artist who struggles over his masterpiece and learns through great loss what his true subject will be; and a religious elementary school teacher who tries to understand her rebellious, militant son. In the title story, which first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, an orphaned young man and his former high school football coach set out to kidnap the coach’s daughter from Los Angeles and bring her back to East Texas.
With an assured, poignant voice, Pizzolatto places us at the crossroads of memory and desire, somewhere between here and the Yellow Sea.