Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town: 1

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Everyone Dies Famous In a Small Town is a short but powerful and important read and I think adults and older children would both really enjoy it. This is a short, dark and heartbreaking read but beautifully written. There are many characters - even if you do not notice every connection instantly, each story acts as an important lesson for the reader. Highly recommended. Oh my goodness! Traveling between Alaskan woods to isolated, beautiful Pacific beaches and being introduced to vivid, original, quirky characters, diving into interesting, varied topics including wildfires, a mermaid, basketball bears gave me quality time . This was one of the reading experiences I’ve ever had!

Admittedly I don’t usually read short stories, but with this title, Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town, I just had to give it a try and I was not disappointed.Famous in a Small Town" debuted at number 54 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for the week of April 7, 2007. After 33 weeks on the chart, it peaked at number 14 on November 17, 2007. I read these interlinked stories with increasing levels of anxiety for the characters and a growing sense of admiration for the author, as she charts the lives of the girls and boys involved as they try to navigate their way through a succession of crises not of their own making. As each ‘chapter’ contains a different protagonist you can be forgiven for wondering how this character or story relates to the others. Set in the mid-1990s, the stories are set in Alaska and in small towns scattered across the American west. We meet hitchhikers, kids with reputations, girls who grew up wild and free, siblings who’ve suffered loss. Some common threads are apparent across multiple stories — the early warnings of a wildfire in one story turn into an out-of-control inferno in another; the aftermath of certain events are sprinkled throughout several characters’ lives, but we only get the full picture in a seemingly unrelated story later on. The writing in this superb story is simply outstanding. The isolated, sparsely populated community is captured with an economy of style that reminded me of Hemmingway at his best:

This is the line, towards the end of ‘ The Stranger in the Woods‘, the penultimate story of this brilliant collection, that finally convinced me I was reading something very special indeed. I have amazing reading time and proudly grading this book with five creative, impressive, addictive, original stars!In ‘ Sea – Shaken Houses‘ we meet Jane and Martha. The girls have been best friends all their lives and are homeschooled but their “badass” mothers have a “strange dislike” for each other but at least they agree “that little girls should not be made to conform to anything that did not ebb and flow like the tide: their minds, at the very least, should run rampant along the beach”. Could the mothers’ dislike for each other be because the girls share the same father? The stories themselves felt like an ode to small towns and the communities they hold. Small towns get a reputation for being places where nothing happens, life stands still. But these stories are bursting with life, love, heartbreak, tragedy, and more. The characters were great and I especially loved seeing them through new perspectives when they popped up in different stories. I most related to 2 characters in one of the stories who are not outdoorsy camping types, but because they’re Alaskan people expect them to be experts. Very relatable. I flew through the book and think many of you would enjoy it as well. Releases in April!